The love story takes second place to an operatic, chest-beating, stylish, but overstated exploration of place and...
A run-down European hotel, now being restored by its new Chinese owner, becomes the temporary home of a Dutch writer recording memories of “love in times of mass tourism.”
Prolific Dutch poet, playwright, essayist, and novelist Pfeijffer delivers an epic new work featuring Leonard Pfeijffer, “an esteemed and popular writer,” who offers an account of his time with Clio, “the love of my life [who] isn’t my love any more.” Recollections of this intense, lusty Italian affair form a plotline that is sandwiched between the additional meat of the book—a disquisition on Europe, its history, significance, and decline under assault from tourists. Clio is an art historian whose work lends perspective to the view that Europe’s greatness is all in its past. The fictional Pfeijffer is writing a novel on the subject of tourism, setting up a hall of mirrors concerning fact and fiction. But the insistent, multifaceted focus on the continent and its identity, and the meanings and truths to be found therein—financial, philosophical, political, creative, and more—merge into a relentless drumbeat of a message, with every subtopic, whether Clio’s interest in a lost Caravaggio or visits made to Malta, Genoa, Amsterdam, or Abu Dhabi, expanding on or threading back to the thesis. Europe is in the business of selling its past to tourists, a “barbarian invasion” that is wringing “the neck of three thousand years of European culture”; “You could describe the history of Europe as a history of longing for history”; “Europe has become a prisoner of its own past”; and so on. Meanwhile, the eponymous, once-magnificent hotel rolls forward as a metaphor for all of the above, with its aging European clientele; its refugee bellboy, Abdul (representing the immediacy and potential of immigration); and its new owner applying fresh, globally inspired layers of profitable nostalgia. Pfeijffer’s voice is variously comic, tragic, knowledgeable, inspired, and obsessive as he rides his hobbyhorse of a subject to a forced but characteristically elegant conclusion.
The love story takes second place to an operatic, chest-beating, stylish, but overstated exploration of place and perspective.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-16590-1
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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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