A complicated, layered exploration of how bullying, fear, and a desperate desire to fit in have lasting effects.
A 26-year-old woman works to better understand how her past is affecting her present relationships.
Enid, an information architect at the Space Agency and a true-crime aficionado, is caught in a complicated behavioral pattern of her own making, she thinks. Her father left her mother when she was young to start another family, destroying her mother emotionally in the process. Her half sisters, Edna and Kira, have recently welcomed her into their lives. But Enid is convinced that there’s something wrong with her, despite having a good job, a good life, and being a caring daughter to her mother (who suffers from severe bouts of depression). She has a phobia about bald men, cleans obsessively, and dates continually yet refuses to stay with anyone longer than a month or two; she’s also unhappy with her proclivity to take the easiest route and lean into expected behavior rather than doing what she believes is best. Case in point: Though she’s a lesbian who has a complicated relationship with her gender identity, when her half sister asks her to bake a cake for her sister’s gender reveal party, she immediately says yes and then berates herself for not standing up for what she believes in. The novel follows Enid as she seeks to better understand her worsening phobias and the way they’ve started to negatively affect her job and life. She starts therapy, begins to let people see the real her, and works to unpick the knots in her memory that are compromising her ability to live her life. Enid is introspective without being irritating.
A complicated, layered exploration of how bullying, fear, and a desperate desire to fit in have lasting effects.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668014233
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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