An entertaining work of exceptional vitality.
Covering just one day, these closely linked stories reveal the many ties and secrets of a rural Indiana town.
It’s the early 1980s and Reagan is president. As she prepares for the monthly gathering of the Bright Creek Girls Gaming Club, Candy Wilson realizes she’s forgotten to buy paprika for her deviled eggs. Elsewhere in Bright Creek, Turner Davis is late getting his zinnias in. Horace Allen smells the sea from the mix of herbs and vegetables in his garden. Each of the 14 stories is named for a town resident, and most are told in a close third person that shares characters’ thoughts and memories, often in connection with their neighbors. The paprika and zinnias might suggest a fair helping of the mundane, but Hunt, whose novels have featured war, racism, and sorcery, has a lot going on here. As he charts how often, and amusingly, characters’ paths cross in a small town, he delves into “all those little secrets that weren’t secrets at all,” from a teacher who is fired amid rumors of lesbianism to a high school custodian who was once a “promising ballroom dancer” to a World War II veteran who found unrequited love on Crete. Hunt gets a lot of life on the page with the shrewd accumulation of details. The teacher, Irma Ray, recently hanged herself, and her real secret is a late revelation. Also appearing is Zorrie Underwood, the title character from Hunt’s novel Zorrie (2021), which furnishes a few other people in the new work. This sort of cross-pollination comes up in recent novels by Elizabeth Strout and Michael Farris Smith, both writers with a defined literary terrain, which may be something Hunt is working toward. In broader terms, his book harks back to Our Town, of which Thornton Wilder said he sought “to find a value above all price for the smallest events of our daily life.”
An entertaining work of exceptional vitality.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781639730100
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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