A swirling story of cross-generational secrets and complex family bonds.
In Stiles’ mystery set in 2015, a Brooklynite pottery instructor likes to start fires, so when a strange conflagration breaks out while she’s home for the holidays in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she becomes a prime suspect.
Mary Newcombe has no memory of being present on the night of the fire, but several people seem to remember seeing her there, including the local mail carrier: “It creeps me out that they’re all looking over and staring at me like I’m a liar,” Mary narrates. Also, her adoptive mother, Beatrice “Birdie” Newcombe, appears to know more about the evening in question than she’s letting on. Mary wonders if the locals have simply fallen victim to local gossip; she’s also troubled by the possibility that they may have other agendas in accusing her. It doesn’t help her frame of mind that, for as long as Mary can remember, Birdie has habitually kept secrets from her. The police clearly know more than they’re telling as well, as they’re searching for Mary’s cousin, oyster farmer Jimmy Newcombe, as part of their investigation. Soon afterward, the situation becomes more mysterious when Birdie reveals, in a voicemail, that Jimmy has been killed in a car accident. Stiles effectively weaves a grand conspiracy that the protagonist must unravel to prove her innocence and learn the truth. The story, however, isn’t exclusively told through her eyes; Barbara Haskins, who’s a nurse at a women’s health clinic, and Lisa Doanne, a member of a local cleaning company, effectively frame the narrative, as well. One of the novel’s key themes is how people and events often exist in gray areas; as a result, readers may sometimes struggle to sympathize with a given character’s actions. Overall, though, this perspective results in natural, realistic storytelling, in which each moment flows naturally from the last. Overall, this twisty novel will be a good option for those looking for an unconventional and thematically potent mystery.
A swirling story of cross-generational secrets and complex family bonds.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798892420303
Page Count: 325
Publisher: Alcove Press
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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