A sometimes-vague but often engaging self-referential creative mashup.
Carmi presents a collection of poems inspired by, and about, his own paintings.
The poet explores transformation and transcendence in this hybrid book of poetry and art. He notes in an introduction that painting reminds him that everyone is interconnected and that the cardinal sign of art is that one feels awe when one sees it. Carmi’s paintings offer variations on themes, with brush strokes that evoke tree roots, aerial maps, or even a brain or lung scan laid atop splashes of watercolor. He discusses his creative process in his poems, vacillating between wanting to “give this thing / Some love” (“Time to give it love”) and feeling betrayed by his artwork: “The colors turned their backs / On me / They wouldn’t listen to / Sensible talk / They are running fast away” (“As you want them to be”). He delights in a sense of rebirth and explores the concept that when one is happy, the “big mind” of collective consciousness experiences that emotion, too. Indeed, he describes feeling one with the world, stating, “Look through me / And see yourself / Everywhere” (“Transparent”). However, the paintings are so abstract that their relationships to the poems are murky, and the subject matter is so ethereal that readers have little that’s tangible to hold on to. When Carmi does include concrete details, however, he does so beautifully: “The wind freezes the moments / And sends them to the meadows” (“A being of now”). He is also insightful and inspiring in statements such as “hope belongs / To the future” (“Smoke signal”). The psychology underlying the poems is often compelling, as well, as when Carmi discusses a healing technique in which one carries pain like a foreign object in your pocket, until “you get familiar with the feeling of it being there, and you go on with the business of life that now includes this uncomfortable feeling” (“The child has stopped crying”).
A sometimes-vague but often engaging self-referential creative mashup.Pub Date: March 18, 2023
ISBN: 9798375427737
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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