A novel that transcends concept with its human touches.
A fictionalized telling of the troubled life and storied film career of Rita Hayworth and her marriage to Orson Welles, as seen through the eyes of a sympathetic outsider.
Film-smart and street-smart—if that street happens to be Hollywood Boulevard—the made-up witness, Rusty Redburn, is an Illinois farm girl who dropped out of college to test her fortunes in Tinseltown. She gets a job with Columbia Pictures' publicity department digging up dirt on celebrities. She's so good at it that she's hired by repugnant Columbia head Harry Cohn to spy on the uncontrollable Welles and his wife, Hayworth, whom Cohn lusts after. In her guise as Hayworth's gal Friday, Redburn, a lesbian, comes to care for the actress, whose "crippling fear of her own unworthiness" can be traced back to abuse by her father, her childhood dance partner. But though Redburn idolizes Welles for Citizen Kane, she quickly discovers he's better at acting the role of charmer than actually caring for anyone, including Hayworth, as much as himself—and is physically clumsy to boot. Tracing Hayworth's sad decline through films including Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady From Shanghai, the novel has a good time with cutthroat gossip columnists; the ego-driven female film editor who chopped Lady; and crass hustlers including Eddie Judson, Hayworth's first husband, who altered film history by having her hairline raised and the color of her hair changed to her trademark fiery red. Redburn, a serious film buff who writes mimeographed movie reviews as Regina X, is a nifty invention, allowing Charyn the novelist to play Charyn the critic. Hayworth "sang" with her every movement, “in the shake of a shoulder, in the jig of her leg.” Kane was "a sarabande of moments." The veteran author's charm and easy sense of irony further lift this surprisingly affecting book.
A novel that transcends concept with its human touches.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-09133-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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