An unsettling and melancholy dreamscape that leans more on aesthetics than on plot.
A young woman goes to work as a housekeeper at a hotel that remains curiously without guests in this disquieting and elegiac novel from a Swedish writer.
Rafaela, the first-person narrator, grew up near the sea, and she never dreamed of taking a job in the mountain town of Strega, but after her mother comes across the Olympic Hotel's want ad for "nine maids for the winter season," she applies for a position out of a sense of duty. She soon finds herself in the beautiful and desolate hotel—alone except for her fellow seasonal hires and three members of the permanent staff. The new girls are rigorously trained in hospitality and hotel upkeep and given strange lectures on servile womanhood, electricity, and the nuns living at a nearby convent, but days and then weeks go by without anyone ever renting a room. Lykke Holm builds a sense of aimless unease as the housekeepers inure themselves to days of seemingly senseless work and harsh punishment from their managers, and Rafaela falls into a homoerotic friendship with a fellow maid. Right as the tension begins to tilt toward tediousness, a local holiday brings strangers to the Olympic for a party, and one of the maids disappears. The search for Cassie and grief over her disappearance form an interesting engine for the latter half of the book—as do Rafaela’s musings on women’s bodies as inevitable crime scenes—but the persistent ambiguity about what is and isn’t real occasionally feels like indecisiveness on the part of the author and prevents it from satisfying as a mystery. Lykke Holm’s prose—full of litanies of strange and striking imagery—is, without a doubt, the book's greatest strength.
An unsettling and melancholy dreamscape that leans more on aesthetics than on plot.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-53967-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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