A welcome corrective to romanticized notions of mental illness, written with compassion and authenticity.
In her debut novel, Danish writer Gråbøl paints a portrait of a young woman living in state-sponsored housing in Copenhagen struggling with both mental illness and its treatments.
Before the relative independence of the residential facility, our narrator was locked in the psychiatric ward of a hospital and subjected to repeated electroconvulsive therapy. She’s determined never to be sent there again. Now she has her own fifth-floor room along with other young adults, among them Hector, from Peru, where his psychoses were treated with exorcism. Their housing is intended to be temporary, an “impermanent halfway house,” “a practice home.” Together with the support staff, she and Hector and the others cook communal meals, take excursions, shop at the grocery store. The outside world seems hard to fathom; the world of the facility is deeply familiar: “We know what sort of diagnosis a person’s got even before they’ve mentioned it: boys are schizotypal, girls are borderline or obsessive-compulsive. Eating disorders are easily spotted. The grammar of the ill is gendered, but also a matter of economics….” Our insomniac narrator wants to learn how to sleep; no one can help her with that. Her diagnosis is borderline—“but between what and what?” Like all of them, she struggles with shame, weight gain, side effects, hopelessness. She self-harms, though never enough to require hospitalization. Gråbøl’s eye is unsparing and convincing, her prose vivid and alive. “Something uncontrollable stirs in me, it rises from my calves, as if I was a bottle and someone poured acid into me….” The narrator doesn’t deny that she needs help. “The days were as signs drawn by hands in the air; depictions of knots or loops.” But at the same time, she has questions: “Why doesn’t anyone wonder about the line between trauma and treatment?...about the relationship between compulsion and compliance?...care and abuse?...between surrender and obliteration?”
A welcome corrective to romanticized notions of mental illness, written with compassion and authenticity.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781953861849
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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