A tragicomic debut by an impressive new voice.
A young mortuary cosmetologist seeks a balm for her own grief in the world of BDSM.
Amelia Aurelia loves her job. As the cosmetologist in the family-run Aurelia’s Funeral Parlour on the Australian coast, she is part of a well-oiled machine that seeks to provide burial services for the dead and the solace of a perfect funeral experience for the living. “As I brush makeup across Jennifer’s face,” Amelia thinks as she attends to a young woman who has committed suicide, “I wish I could tell her…how important it is for her people to see her like this, how they need to witness this image of her at peace before they can begin to feel peace themselves.” As good as she is at her job, however, Amelia knows that working so closely with grief takes an emotional toll that she seeks to address through daily, more-or-less anonymous sexual encounters with men who will “move [her] out of [her] head and into [her] body [and] fill [her] up with physical feeling to the point where emotions and thoughts [are] wrung out.” In this way, Amelia has created a fragile but working equilibrium, but when her wildly affectionate mother dies in a sudden accident, all of Amelia’s carefully built boundaries come tumbling down. Reeling with grief, she flees from her flamboyant stepfather, Vincent, her polyamorous brother, Simon, and her mother’s best friend, the irrepressible mortuary receptionist Judy, on the day before her mother’s funeral to stay with her emotionally distant biological father, Jack, at his isolated home in Tasmania. While there, Amelia falls into the BDSM scene, first as a sub taking part in an onstage pain scene, and then at the local kink club, the Widow Maker, where she begins her training as a domme. In both roles, Amelia struggles to manage her overwhelming grief as she moves through the rawest phases of her trauma and into the long, slow settling that comes after. At turns a rollicking sexual romp almost slapstick in its intensity and an existential meditation filled with the languid profundity of bodies at their final rest, this unusual novel navigates the most treacherous of emotional territories—the fault lines between love and grief, sex and death—with a deliberate lack of grace and real charm.
A tragicomic debut by an impressive new voice.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953387-12-7
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
SEEN & HEARD
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