A raucous, poignant exploration of the blood ties that bind…and chafe.
A 12-year-old girl, her mom, and their elderly landlady support each other through family separation, violence, and much kvetching banter in this warmhearted family saga.
Nicholas’ novel unfolds at the turn of the 21st century and centers around Maureen LeeRoyce, a 30-ish widow who waitresses and cleans houses to support her daughter Kalayla—Cambridge, Massachusetts’ most obstreperous 12-year-old. Almost as cantankerous is their septuagenarian neighbor and landlady Lena Barzetti, who lends Kalayla a helping hand and unwanted advice. Both have spectacularly fractured families. Maureen was disowned by her Irish Catholic mother for marrying Kalayla’s father Jamal, a Black man and a Protestant to boot; when Kalayla learns about the rejection (Maureen had told her that the maternal side of the family all died in an explosion before she was born), she has an emotional meltdown that Lena trudges in to repair. Lena’s own fraught past includes savage beatings at the hands of her now-deceased husband, the disappearance of one of her sons, and the deaths of two others in combat in the Vietnam War. Balm for the ladies’ wounded souls appears in the persons of Matthew Eccli II (called Mattwo), Lena’s high school flame, and his son, Rico, a 30-something hunk who’s next in line to run the family karate dojo and starts paying welcome attention to Maureen. Kalayla meets her cousin Kieran, which initiates a drift toward reconciliation between Maureen and her parents, and Maureen resumes her ambition to be an artist (with Lena’s help). But even as things seem to be looking up for Maureen and Kalayla, they must confront the increasingly menacing presence of Jamal’s mentally unstable brother Clarence, who becomes obsessed with Maureen.
Nicholas’ yarn is an engrossing look at families that unravel and must be painfully knitted back together and the knotted, traumatic histories that give rise to unforgivable sins that must somehow be forgiven. The author crafts sharply etched, vibrant, prickly characters who resonate despite their differences; Kalayla and Lena, in particular, are two tough cookies (as fiercely protective of loved ones as they are annoyingly critical of them) who have their own internal weaknesses that sometimes make them break. Nicholas’ portrait of Kalayla is brilliant—she’s a pitch-perfect smart, sullen tween, full of prickly attitude and rigid, juvenile moralizing dragged kicking and screaming toward adult complexity—all rendered in an adolescent’s crudely vigorous language. (“I hated that I felt sorry for him, hated that I couldn’t tell him he was a jerk and a butthole and a rotten uncle and a disgusting brother. I hated that I couldn’t hate him the way I wanted to.”) Lena displays a singular voice in her own right as she helps Kalayla figure it all out in her acerbic, exasperated dudgeon (“You don’t understand your mama at all! She does stupid things just like you, me, and everybody else! You’re the one who put her on the Perfect Mama Pedestal. She never belonged there. Nobody does”). The result is an entertaining saga about the wisdom that grudgingly passes from old to young.
A raucous, poignant exploration of the blood ties that bind…and chafe.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2025
ISBN: 9798218572617
Page Count: 377
Publisher: KDP
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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