An affecting portrait of women’s lives both in cosmopolitan Beirut and in rustic mountain towns.
Four generations of Lebanese women, their lives spanning the 20th century, show a different side of that war-torn nation’s story.
“Is it possible to imagine life in Lebanon without violence, disappearance, and loss?” Asmahan al-Dahli asks in 1982, after she and her daughter, Lama, have moved to New York. They face an uncertain future, but having lived with a fractured legacy, through years of war, mother and daughter seek the peace and stability their foremothers could not find. Their family’s story begins during the years of World War I, when Asmahan’s great-grandmother Shahira survives a plague of locusts that causes famine. The fictional hill towns of Ksoura and Ajmat experience little of the war; families are more concerned with getting first cousins married (a common practice at the time). Shahira’s daughter Yasmine, for example, weds her cousin Ghassan. She dies giving birth to Layla, whom Shahira raises, their home becoming the family’s natural gathering place. Layla later moves to Beirut to prepare for university, where she falls hard for a student named Yusuf, who abandons her to follow his leftist political aspirations. She marries the much-older Salem, a cruel man who physically abuses her until Asmahan, Layla’s daughter, and her twin brother, Walid, intervene; Salem then verbally abuses Layla until her death. Occasionally, narrator Asmahan knows more than the reader does, as when Layla begins her affair with Yusuf and then, a few pages later, the narrative goes back to describe their initial coupling. A translator’s note from Hartman reminds us that author Humaydan seeks to eschew received notions of history and to tell the truth about women’s lives and the way women tell stories—not always in a linear manner, but sometimes backtracking, sometimes curving in tangents to emphasize an event.
An affecting portrait of women’s lives both in cosmopolitan Beirut and in rustic mountain towns.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781623715625
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Interlink
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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