A simple, moving story of outcasts coming together.
A “canceled” public figure is thrown back on herself and what remains of her once-successful life, befriended only by a stray cat and a lost little girl.
In this near-weightless tale of the heaviness of living, Haesoo Lim, a former psychotherapist and regular TV guest, walks the nighttime streets of her South Korean town, lost in a fog of confusion after the disintegration of her marriage and the ending of her career. After her (scripted) negative comment about a popular actor is held responsible for the man’s suicide, public opinion turns against her. Passing through her local park’s cones of streetlight and more-soothing shadows, Haesoo carries with her a letter she will never mail, destined, like others she’s written to various people in her life, for the park’s garbage can. Haesoo’s story is revealed to us remotely, tentatively, akin to the way she herself moves around the neighborhood and to the way many of the block’s frightened street cats eye her. One scruffy orange cat in particular piques her interest. It’s been named Turnip by a local child, 10-year-old Sei, who befriends Haesoo. Gradually, the reality of Sei’s empty home life brushes up against Haesoo’s sad wanderings, which in turn brush up against Turnip’s struggle for survival: a triangle of characters locked into each other’s fate, each looking for relief, for a lasting home. Melancholy and ruminative yet possessed of a quiet energy, Kim’s tale leads Haesoo toward the realization that, more often than not, what we yearn to be is who we already are, that life is less a matter of becoming than of revealing. While her lawyer flatly tells her that one can’t trust people, that “kindness is the first to go when luck changes,” Haesoo reaffirms to herself a truth she has known for some time as a counselor: Goodness and growth are impossible “without leaning on kindness and empathy.” Despite everything, she has not lost, and must not lose, this faith.
A simple, moving story of outcasts coming together.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781632062321
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
SEEN & HEARD
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