Vivid, thoughtful, emotionally layered fiction.
In this story collection—her first book to be translated into English—Latvian writer Egle delves into the feelings and experiences of women at different ages.
A mischievous young girl longs for a beautiful doll, unaware of what the adults around her are getting up to. A wife suffers a tragic loss. An office worker dates a man who turns into a stalker. A librarian gives in to a secret desire. A sister is haunted by the memory of a younger brother who disappeared. Animals feature in several stories: a pet cat, a fox in the snow. A heart transplant recipient tells his wife that the surgeon cooked his original heart, then fed it to his dachshund. The focus throughout this collection is on women: their inner lives, their desires, their complex thoughts and often contradictory feelings. There are men here as well, but they’re ancillary, never the main characters. A woman repulsed by her alcoholic stepfather tries to understand how her mother ended up with him: “What about him did she come to like, why did she want to marry this man, have children, live together with him day to day, year to year, eat at the same table, sleep in the same bed?” With a perceptive eye and a nuanced understanding, Egle shows the complicated bonds that connect families, friends, and romantic partners, their dependencies, frustrations, tenderness, and incongruities. Her characters contend with heartbreak, loss, and cognitive decline. “It’s a woman’s fate to love and suffer,” a woman thinks on a three-day hiking trip with an old flame who wants to marry her, but “she has strongly resolved to cheat fate.” The prose is unhurried, the language at times refreshingly earthy, and in any situation there’s more than first meets the eye. Of a field of beautiful flowers, the same woman observes, “In the sweltering heat they exude the aroma of a piss-filled jar of honey.”
Vivid, thoughtful, emotionally layered fiction.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781960385154
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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 tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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