A cerebral elegy that demands patience, even from serious film lovers.
German author Kinsky’s spare, abstract fiction centers on a woman’s nostalgia for experiencing movies in a theater.
Like the iconoclastic filmmaker John Cassevetes, whom she quotes throughout, Kinsky avoids conventional plot structure and psychological probing. Her unnamed narrator spends pages describing the physical world, often as a vista of “flatness and vastness”—vastness being a favorite word—and musing about the relationship between image and memory, cinema as “vastness…bound to this physical place,” and the “communality of the cinematic experience.” Meanwhile, she reveals little about the emotional landscape of the people around her and shares only the barest details of her own story. As a child in an unnamed, probably Eastern European country (given that she studied Polish and Russian), she watches no television and only occasionally visits the cinema with her father, whose reticence is the only characteristic she mentions. As an adult, she takes photographs, but whether as a career or hobby isn’t clear. No intimate friends show up, only acquaintances. After years in London, described by the names of movie theaters she frequented, she moves to Budapest, where an elderly neighbor named Julika mentions that she once “had a fellow who was a great cinema man.” Traveling around southeast Hungary, the narrator finds a small town with an abandoned movie theater she decides to buy and restore after meeting its former projectionist and some other locals. At this point, Kinsky drops in an “interlude” telling the story of a young cinema enthusiast known as Laci who brings movies to his hometown during World War II with the help of a young woman named Julika; while their romance is half-baked and Julika eventually leaves, Laci’s lifelong obsession with cinema is passionate. The narrator takes up her own story again as she completes her restoration and attempts to reopen what had been Laci’s theater. Ultimately, sorrow bleeds through the narrator’s (and author’s) reserve, the decline of cinema epitomizing profound loss—of place, of beloved people (see the dedication at the end), of optimism.
A cerebral elegy that demands patience, even from serious film lovers.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781681378510
Page Count: 176
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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
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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