A Buddhist seeker’s painful journey—occasionally irritating, ultimately illuminating.
In Brandt’s novel, a depressed young woman journeys from New York City to the Himalayas to find herself.
In June 1986, 27-year-old Ellie Adkins lives alone in a four-room apartment in Spanish Harlem and works in a boring, entry-level job at a small nonprofit downtown. Her boyfriend, Seth Federman, has abruptly moved to California to work on Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign, and her best friend Cass is away for the summer. Introverted and lonely, she slides deeper and deeper into apathy and passivity. Searching for the secret to happiness and the truth about love, she rejects an intrusive co-worker’s suggestions of Prozac and therapy and seeks answers in books on magic and spirituality. A flyer in a bookstore leads her to weekly lectures on Buddhism by the charismatic Calvin Ross at a 14th Street loft. Soon she’s entangled in a clandestine relationship with Calvin, a much older man with a long white beard, a slight paunch, and narcissistic tendencies. Cass returns in the fall, with a new punk look and an infatuation with a man who wants to lead an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. When Ellie travels to Nepal with Cass’ mountain-climbing group, much of what she thought she knew is upended, and she is forced to accept new truths. The author’s spare, direct writing style and pithy descriptions of people and places vividly portray late-1980s New York City. Though intelligent, articulate, and beautiful, Ellie seems unable to say no or to express her true feelings, continually accepting dismissive and demeaning treatment from those around her. Her frustrating lack of agency—an authentic portrayal of depressive thinking—makes her hard to warm up to at first, but her keen perception and frank self-awareness (“When I wake now, there is maybe a nanosecond of me being who I used to be, then I think of Calvin, and become who I am now: a harpy, swooping down to take bites out of myself”) draw the reader in.
A Buddhist seeker’s painful journey—occasionally irritating, ultimately illuminating.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9786185728021
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2023
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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