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
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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