A one-way trip to the Twilight Zone via a self-imposed life sentence.
Are we doomed to be punished by the places that scorned us—and if so, who will serve that sentence?
Turkish American author Orhan (I Am My Country, 2023) expands one of his better short fictions into this claustrophobic, captivating allegory about family, country, and the failure of memory. When Turkish emigré Dilara hires a few cryptic builders to renovate an ensuite bathroom as she prepares her home in Baronissi, Italy, to accommodate her dying father, she’s justifiably impatient to see the results. She’s not, however, expecting to find a fully functioning prison cell mirroring the inside of a cell at Istanbul’s gargantuan Silivri Prison—complete with guards and fellow inmates with whom she can converse regularly. Other than the obvious anomaly, Orhan plays it completely straight as Dilara, a psychologist and child development specialist, tries to figure out the meaning of this literal hole in her world. Recounting the violence around the 2013 Gezi Park protests, she eventually explains the family’s flight from Turkey and her father’s subsequent descent into dementia that now requires her constant attention. The book is infected by sickness, both the cosmically unfair illness stealing away Dilara’s father and the failure of Turkey to protect its own or live up to the grace of its people. Meanwhile, Dilara’s nameless and endlessly anxious husband, already absent in spirit, flees for a short-term gig elsewhere. As the prison grows more enveloping than her everyday life, her father, formerly a writer and activist, shifts from deteriorating to semi-lucid; Dilara suspects these two things and the strange memories and episodes she’s experiencing are connected. There’s a lot of emotional power between the drama and the premise here—what seems merely impossible is quickly overwhelmed by the tale’s connecting thread, this inability to recover what has been lost. It’s an odd, elegant little book with disarming sincerity that belies its metaphysical hocus pocus, held aloft by keen literary wordplay and an evocative exploration of what homeland really means.
A one-way trip to the Twilight Zone via a self-imposed life sentence.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780374609429
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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