A haunting, evocative exploration of addiction, redemption, and the stories we tell ourselves.
In Welch’s novel, set after a catastrophic earthquake, a recovering addict must confront her past and find the children she abandoned.
A tectonic shift devastates North America’s West Coast by causing a massive earthquake—9.3 on the Richter scale—and multiple tsunamis, thus reshaping the world order. The loss of life is catastrophic, but the survivors suddenly have new abilities, including the power to understand the languages of animals (“birds were tiresomely repetitive, dogs laconic and positive”), as well as all human tongues. Del Campion, a Canadian mother of three and recovering addict, is traveling to Vancouver Island to find the family she abandoned after the quake. Del tells her life story piecemeal—first to sea lions and, eventually, to a sympathetic human being. She was a sensitive child who found a passion for horseback riding as a teen, and she met her future husband at a stable. But after having three unplanned children, Del became increasingly unhappy with her life. A riding accident hospitalized her, and she struggled with a prescription drug addiction. After the earthquake, things worsened: Her spouse and son went missing in the relief effort, her eldest daughter accidentally burned down their barn and house, and her youngest daughter got involved with cultish religious neighbors. As she locates each family member, missing pieces of her story surface, and with each revelation, she must confront unspeakable events that occurred while she was high or absent. Over the course of this novel, Welch’s spare, evocative prose capably illustrates the various players’ everyday lives (Del’s mother “left business behind in Alberta and in a burst of domesticity bought cookbooks, aprons and a stand mixer”) and also ably gets across the changes to the natural world. The magical realism of human-animal communication adds additional charm and moments of humor that contribute a lighter touch to a narrative that’s otherwise heavy with guilt, regret, and grief.
A haunting, evocative exploration of addiction, redemption, and the stories we tell ourselves.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781998408276
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Buckrider Books
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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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