Finely detailed if sometimes slow.
The reclusive driver of a bookmobile encounters a life-changing stranger during his travels.
The protagonist of this novel—a man so fully devoted to his traveling library that he’s simply known to all as "the Driver"—leads a quiet and particular life: He occupies a small Quebec City apartment alone; socializes primarily with a lone author friend; and is characterized by a handful of “idiosyncratic ideas” honed privately over the course of his lifetime (“if two people were really made to get along together, they should like not only the same books and the same songs, but also the same passages in his books and songs”). For almost his entire adulthood, his routine has varied little. He makes seasonal rounds in his mobile library (a converted milk truck) to bring everything from Hemingway to publisher-rejected manuscripts to the far-flung readers of Canada’s North Shore and surrounding areas. Now aging, he anticipates his final book "tour," but his routine is thrown into disarray upon meeting Marie, the enigmatic and captivating manager of sorts for a traveling brass band. The Driver is instantly engaged by her “tenderness and strength,” and, as he befriends and travels alongside the band (they in a refurbished school bus), he and Marie forge a close and intangible bond. As the Driver, full of melancholy, soaks in the details of his penultimate tour—the austere, lonely landscapes; the strange fellow readers, from fishermen’s wives to hydroplane pilots—he and Marie grow closer, exposing the vulnerability of two introverted souls struggling to close a chasm between them. Quaint and understated, Poulin’s novel offers a deeply felt meditation on loneliness, age, and the improbability of human connection. Set against a lovingly rendered landscape, the ups and downs of Marie and the Driver’s relationship are often affecting, though the novel lacks the panache to become something truly original. Those seeking a tender (albeit sometimes milquetoast) account of two intersecting lives, however, will end this book satisfied and even moved.
Finely detailed if sometimes slow.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953861-06-1
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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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