A nuanced portrayal of a child’s lost years with a flawed and irresponsible parent.
An 8-year-old girl kidnapped by her father lives on the run with him in 1980s Italy in the English-language debut from a Paris-based author and visual artist.
Hanging upside down on the playground by her knees, Ilaria pictures her favorite gymnast, Nadia Comăneci, while waiting for her sister; since Ilaria’s parents separated, the girls have been living with their mother in Geneva. Instead, her father, Fulvio, arrives, saying there’s been a change of plan. What follows is the upending of Ilaria’s life. Her father drives her from Switzerland to France, and then to Italy, stopping constantly to make telephone calls but never letting her talk to her mother. “Phone booths are cages on the frontier between three worlds. When Dad starts talking, I see all three dancing around inside that little box: Mom’s world, Dad’s world, and the world of the freeway.” He buys her lemonade at bars, takes her shopping for toys, pinches her cheek, asks, “Are you happy?” Writing from Ilaria’s first-person perspective and in the present tense, Zalapì keeps the focus tightly on Ilaria’s experience as her father drives from town to town, avoiding the police. “We live in profile, Dad and me. I know the outline of his nose really well, the oval shape of his ears, the hairs that stick out from his eyebrows, just above his glasses frame.” She feels a responsibility for him even as he sends telegrams to her mother like: “Passing on your daughter’s disappointment for not talking to you STOP I reject all accusations of abduction STOP.” Short on money, he uses Ilaria to help claim luggage lost by strangers at train stations. He drinks more and more, “sweats, splutters, gesticulates, yells.” Yet even as he grows increasingly erratic, Ilaria can’t hate him.
A nuanced portrayal of a child’s lost years with a flawed and irresponsible parent.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781635425635
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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