Hargrave’s lush, thoughtful novel underscores the way any sexual choice contains elements of both freedom and limitation.
A great love between two women is continually found, discarded, and rediscovered in this lyrical meditation on paths taken.
Erica and Laure meet on the steps of Sacré-Cœur in 1978 when the 18-year-old English tourist stumbles across the gorgeous Parisian reading and smoking. Before long they’re a pair, at least for the summer weeks that remain before Erica starts university back in Norfolk. Over the next three decades they’ll freeze each other out, engage in a torrid extramarital (at least for Erica) tryst, visit each other’s happiest homes, and finally extract some wisdom from their bond. In other words, Hargrave has written a big love story with occasional echoes of McEwan’s Atonement and Austen’s Persuasion—but with a spine stiffened less by pure longing and more by immediate loss. Erica fits in easily with Laure’s circle of friends, their ringleader a gay café owner named Michel who creates “a safe space, a place where gay men and women, transsexuals and bisexuals were welcome.” While passing years see increased acceptance of same-sex relationships, they don’t mitigate the complications Erica’s bisexuality brings, or the sheer tragedy of Michel’s death from AIDS. The author moves between descriptions of seedy squats (in one, Laure used a “glug jug” for midnight toileting) to places of peace and order, like Erica and her writer husband Anthony’s coastal home, underscoring both how unimportant luxury is to real intimacy and what a disguise it can be to its lack. Even when the two women experience deep connection, they distrust it, perhaps because they gave it up early in their relationship. Perversely, it’s in scenes free from sexual tension, like caring for Michel as he grows frail or enjoying the company of Erica and Ant’s young daughters, where the human longing for sexual communion stands out most clearly, as an urge toward life and creativity. Hargrave’s novel sounds a deep note of the consequences of ignoring one’s own heart and breaking the hearts of others.
Hargrave’s lush, thoughtful novel underscores the way any sexual choice contains elements of both freedom and limitation.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781668204276
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Summit
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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