A moving portrait of a woman slowly making her unsteady way toward connection and the possibility of happiness.
Latvian author Vinogradova explores the aftermath of loss in this award-winning novel about a woman whose sister disappears.
The reader first encounters Rute through her sister Dina’s eyes. To Dina—lonely and struggling, haunted by the traumatic childhood the two endured—her younger sister seems spoiled; Rute has a loving husband and a beautiful home with heated floors. The next chapter jumps forward in time: Dina has been missing for 10 years, and Rute has fallen apart. Instead of the house with the heated floors, she’s staying in a dilapidated cabin inherited from the father she and Dina never knew. Unsure if Dina is alive or dead, Rute writes her letter after letter. “Yesterday I thought the river might be in pain,” she writes of the waterway beside the cabin.“That it carries too much.” Pulled unwillingly into the lives of a pregnant neighbor with a small son and her seafaring brother, Rute comes to learn more about her own father, and ultimately about herself. Vinogradova, who has written for children as well as adults, has a straightforward, unadorned style and an expansive empathy for her characters. Everyone in the book struggles in their own ways, from Rute’s neighbors to her husband back in Riga, to the incarcerated mother Rute visits in prison. No one has it easy; no one is actually “spoiled.” The brutality of life is ever-present and matter-of-fact. Children are neglected, unwanted kittens drowned in a bag. But there’s kindness and beauty as well. The river keeps flowing. “Pain gives birth to pain,” Rute writes to her sister later in the book. “…But is reality just pain? Is there a school for laughter? If there was I think I’d like to sign up.”
A moving portrait of a woman slowly making her unsteady way toward connection and the possibility of happiness.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781960385130
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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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