A subtle story of family, friendship, strong women, and the hopeful side of technological advancement.
An intergenerational SF saga in which a dying wealthy woman bears her responsibilities soberly with the help of an artificial intelligence.
In an alternate version of 2018, 61-year-old Samantha Rain, a self-made millionaire, is a sociable and multitalented investor. When she receives a diagnosis of incurable cancer that gives her only a few months to live, she takes solace in Sam, a highly advanced artificial intelligence for which she served as a model. Her late father, Moshe Rainewicz, who changed his name to Michael Rain, tells his story of pain and survival through a series of interviews with the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which reveal a side of the man that he kept hidden from his daughter. Samantha’s own daughter, Grace, is an accomplished architect in Chicago whose firm is struggling to stay in business, due primarily to the refusal of a high-profile client to pay them for a project. In flashbacks, Grace navigates marital problems, the follies of raising teenage daughters with wayward streaks, and a time-consuming career that left her exhausted at the end of every day. In this novel, Lawrence meticulously crafts a century of personal histories and daily routines, and he develops a cast of characters who, despite their elite social statuses, are consistently sympathetic and relatable. Certain interactions, such as that between Michael and his interviewer, feel overly staged and stodgy. Overall, however, the plot billows and falls with an unforced realism that, for the most part, doesn’t get caught up in overemphatic prose or melodrama. As Samantha and technological marvel Sam converse—and as Grace interacts with the AI—readers are carried along on a breezy thought experiment tackling the insecurities and unexpected comforts to be found in the connection between human and computer. Fortunately, no heavy-handed dystopian robot uprising swoops in to set the world afire.
A subtle story of family, friendship, strong women, and the hopeful side of technological advancement.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73770-001-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Christmas Lake Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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