A strong, versatile collection as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
A debut short story collection set mostly in Southern California.
These nine stories focus on desire and betrayal and how people cope with the consequences. Many of the stories are set in Los Angeles, a city whose allure and harshness seem to have a withering effect on the characters’ ability to empathize. Yet Sather takes great care to avoid mocking their folly. They make terrible choices, young and old, and the stories are juicy plotwise but never saccharine. Whether it’s a teenager trying to blackmail a parent or a deadbeat musician throwing away a big chance, Sather unearths touching levels of pain behind the desperation. She also writes about illness very well, including a character with Lou Gehrig’s disease and a young woman facing an early death from cancer. These stories offset others about a paparazzo in rehab, a fatal home invasion, and a teenage girl ditching summer camp. The varied plots and themes give the book surprising force, and Sather writes with the confidence and verve of a seasoned author. In “God’s Work,” an older judge goes on his first date since the death of his son. In a hotel that night he recalls his son pitching a baseball, feeling “stunned by such fragility,” how, as the boy played that day, “the ball carried something he didn’t want to happen, something he worked against and couldn’t stop from coming anyway.” There’s also humor and wit, as in “Venice,” in which a teenage girl says of her mother, “Her hair in a ponytail but her face a touch jowly, she looked like a competent babysitter who had overstayed their childhoods.” But for all the characters’ bravado or callousness, Sather sends them toward a reckoning and lets us make judgments at our own risk.
A strong, versatile collection as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780822947998
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Univ. of Pittsburgh
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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