The struggles of a young clergywoman make for a less than compelling story.
A pastor wrestles with her faith in a small Norwegian town.
After the suicide of her friend Kristiane, a puppeteer, Liv heads north from a seminary in Germany where she’s been pursuing a doctorate in theology to become the assistant to the parish priest in a remote Norwegian town. A year later, she still struggles to process her feelings about Kristiane’s death. Triggered by the suicide of the 19-year-old daughter of one of her parishioners, Liv’s thoughts lurch awkwardly in an undiluted stream of consciousness between the present day and memories of Kristiane—someone she describes repeatedly, and enigmatically, as “weightless”—reviving her regret over an argument she feels somehow may have contributed to her friend’s decision to take her life. To add to Liv’s anguish over what she confesses is “such a tangle, a hopeless endeavor to unravel an impossible tangle,” she frequently digresses to the subject of her doctoral research—the rebellion in 1852 of the Indigenous Sami against Norwegian settlers and their state church that “converged in a single point, a single channel, which was the language of Christianity.” The uprising occurred in a town several hours from Liv’s church, and she has an opportunity to visit the site when she attends a synod conference there. At that meeting, Liv, the only female priest in attendance, is confronted with the undisguised sexism of some of her colleagues, but that intriguing plot turn comes late in the novel and is abandoned quickly when another suicide attempt in Liv’s parish compels her to rush home. Ørstavik successfully evokes the atmosphere of life in rural Norway in winter, but the fact that her protagonist feels equally chilly and distant robs the story of much of its emotional force.
The struggles of a young clergywoman make for a less than compelling story.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953861-08-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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