An overwrought scaffolding draped with undercooked prose. Maybe if you really love du Maurier...
The author of a Daphne du Maurier knockoff is asked to ghostwrite another du Maurier–adjacent story.
As Cantor, author of the Gatsby-inspired Beautiful Little Fools (2022), notes in her acknowledgments, “In many ways this novel is extremely meta, but what is more so than a fiction writer who just wrote a retelling, writing a novel about a fiction writer…who just wrote a retelling?” Actually, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Olivia Fitzgerald, struggling author of an unsuccessful book called Becky based on du Maurier’s classic Rebecca (“The death knell was the Kirkus review…calling Becky ‘a shoddy, ridiculous knockoff’ ”), is hired to write yet another version of the gothic romance by a hot, reclusive mega-billionaire who claims du Maurier stole his late grandmother’s life story. The chapters that unfold Olivia's trip to California to meet with Henry Asherwood are interspersed with excerpts from what seems to be yet another version of the story, titled The Wife; by whom it was written is unclear. There are also echoes of the Rebecca story arc in Ash’s own life. Everywhere you look, it seems, there are dead wives, unfriendly housekeepers, fires, and the sentence “Last night I dreamt I went to Malibu again,” which is clever but five repetitions seem like a lot. Our path through this house of mirrors is the burgeoning, quasi-forbidden romance between Ash (twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive) and Olivia (“average-looking, curly-haired Jewish girl from suburban Connecticut”), unfurled in such a perfunctory and silly way that it’s possibly supposed to be funny. “Then I tried the scone—simultaneously spicy and sweet and unlike anything I’d tasted before. Unusual but intoxicating. Almost like Ash himself.” LOL. The clear point of the exercise is that literary retellings are not thievery—Rebecca itself can be seen as a retelling of Jane Eyre—but at a certain point one wonders if there's any reason to tell this story so many times.
An overwrought scaffolding draped with undercooked prose. Maybe if you really love du Maurier...Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780778334187
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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
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