A moving tale about the irrepressible tide of history and the fates of the individuals subjected to it.
In Rozycki’s historical novel, Jewish brothers in 1939 Poland are forced to abandon their professional ambitions when the Nazis invade.
Brothers Daniel and Ian Ciszek both have big futures planned: Daniel, the older of the pair, is a budding architect and has just written a manifesto that he hopes will change the face of the industry and attract enviable commissions in Warsaw. Ian is headed to Nancy, France, to begin studying engineering. However, these aspirations are waylaid by historical forces bigger than both of them when Hitler’s forces invade Poland, a catastrophe affectingly depicted by the author. In dire need of money and a place to live, Ian joins a group of communist revolutionaries and is drawn into a dangerous plan to hijack a cigarette truck. He falls in love with the beautiful Alicia, but she remains an exasperating enigma to him; even her name, he learns, isn’t real. Meanwhile, en route to see his father Joseph and transport him to safety, Daniel, in short order, finds himself a solider in the Polish Army, captured by the Germans, and sent to a gulag in Siberia. He manages to lift himself out of the “endless line of identical days” by joining a group of engineers building a secret tunnel and also finds love with Nadhya, a literary scholar pushed into exile. Rozycki doesn’t break any new historical or literary ground here—in fact, this is a pastiche of wartime tales with which most readers will be familiar. However, the story doesn’t read as stale because the plight of the brothers is conveyed so poignantly. Ian is the more fascinating of the two protagonists—on the one hand, he was raised to take great pride in his Polish citizenship, and on the other, he is stung by the vicious antisemitism of his fellow countrymen, a predicament that leaves him conflicted about his nation’s fate at the hands of Hitler. This is a dramatically lively novel as well as a historically rigorous one.
A moving tale about the irrepressible tide of history and the fates of the individuals subjected to it.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781592113866
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Addison & Highsmith Publishers
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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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