A blunt study of damage with a well-earned glimmer of hope.
A successful author helps his mother make her final break from abusive men.
This short novel and the simultaneously released Collapse marks the conclusion of Louis’ autofictional saga about domestic abuse, sexuality, and class begun in The End of Eddy (2017). Here, the unnamed author’s 55-year-old mother, Monique, is desperate for help after years of enduring her partner’s alcoholic rages. The narrator is in Greece for a writing residency, but arranges for her to move temporarily into his Paris apartment while planning her next move. Inevitably, Monique’s crisis resurfaces his memories of abuse; it also forces him to reconnect with his sister, from whom he’s estranged for writing about ugly family secrets. Monique was infuriated with him, too, for a period; he recalls a time she appeared unannounced at one of his readings, a traumatizing experience for both. Still, he rationalizes, hasn’t his literary success writing about his family given him the means to help his mother move on? (“My hurt and hers are linked, because they’re twinned, without separation, without boundaries, I have no regrets because what had hurt her was me expressing my own hurt, I can’t regret it because without this common Hurt, this Hurt that is neither hers nor mine but entirely ours, none of what was happening…would have been possible,” he writes.) The novel weaves between the narrator assisting Monique with apartment-hunting in northern France and meditating on his family’s past. The history is ugly, and as ever, Louis is gifted at detailing abuse in plainspoken, powerful language. But this is also easily the most sunlit of Louis’ works of autofiction, emphasizing the idea that abuse is profoundly harmful, but is not destiny. “Talking over these tiny details moved me deeply, because they were the most tangible manifestation of her future freedom, because freedom is also a matter of details,” he writes.
A blunt study of damage with a well-earned glimmer of hope.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780374616809
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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