A compelling debut, tracing a direct line from women in the past to those in the present.
Anna Thalberg is the red-haired peasant woman at the center of this witch trial, set in the Holy Roman Empire during the Protestant Reformation.
Resented by the villagers for her otherworldly beauty, Anna is accused of witchcraft by a jealous neighbor who suspects that darkness lurks underneath her good looks. Dragged from her home, Anna finds herself locked in a prison tower in the nearby city of Würzburg. The only people determined to prove her innocence are her husband, Klaus, and Father Friedrich, a Catholic priest navigating his own crisis of faith. Isolated in her cell, Anna is tortured by a sadistic guard as Klaus and Friedrich appeal desperately to the powerful men holding her there; Anna will burn at the stake should they fail. Outside the prison, reports of strange goings-on within Würzburg’s city walls are growing. Religious persecution, the dangers posed by spreading superstition, and the myriad ways in which characters suffer can make this book feel bleak—but the suspense of Anna’s dwindling time propels it relentlessly forward. Although on the surface this is a novel concerned with the supernatural, its underlying concerns are about the historical oppression of women, the dehumanizing effects of institutions, the mundanity of evil, and—at its core—the question whether God truly exists. The author sometimes adopts a deliberately jarring, offbeat rhythm to shake the reader out of the reverie his often-poetic text may lull them into. With echoes of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob and A.K. Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches, Mexican author Sangarcía’s debut novel draws on themes that continue to inspire authors across the world. Challenging the reader to reflect on who wields power and the ways women are still subjected to violence, Sangarcía illuminates the connection between Anna’s plight and that of women fighting for autonomy today.
A compelling debut, tracing a direct line from women in the past to those in the present.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781632063731
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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