An ambitious and affecting interweaving of troubled characters’ lives.
The marriage of an aspiring poet and an academic with mental illness anchors Finigan’s novel about intersecting lives in a New England coastal town.
In 1981, Simmons College art major Catharine Conor meets Tom Osborne, who’s pursuing a doctorate in poetry at Harvard University, where his father, Noah, whom he disparages, is an esteemed professor and scholar on the work of Dante Alighieri. Catharine and Tom become romantically involved, yet there are already signs of Tom’s mental health struggles, which are later diagnosed as bipolar disorder. When Tom impulsively sets library stacks containing his father’s works on fire, the professor hushes up the incident and arranges for Tom to finish his degree in London. Catharine joins him there and marries him; they remain committed to each other after a miscarriage, and they later have a son in the 1980s. She starts writing poetry as an emotional outlet and relocates them to the Massachusetts coastal town of Belle Harbor, mortgaging a house with a small inheritance and attaining a job as a middle school art teacher. Tom’s father uses his connections to get his son, who’s now suffering writer’s block, a job at a community college. The narrative then expands to introduce Emma Nolan, who previously lived in the house and lost her son in an accident; Toby, Catharine and Tom’s son, whose life is upended by tragedy; and various “summer people” renting out the next-door cottage, such as teenager Bree, whose interactions with locals have disastrous consequences. By novel’s end, Catharine follows through on a promise to a special person in her life.
This latest novel by Finigan may remind readers of such short story cycles as Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge (2008), given its sweeping presentation of several characters in a small town. The narrative explores their relationships to one another in ways that are sometimes-glancing but often profound. Catharine, Tom, and Toby receive the most attention, but Finigan’s chapter on Bree, and her return later in the novel, allows for a striking demonstration of how one person’s actions can resonate across several lives. The book’s most effective element, though, is its heartbreaking portrayal of mental illness. Catharine believes that Tom is brilliant, as do his awful parents (portrayed in several memorably chilling scenes), and he experiences periods of “whirlwind of hope and possibility,” then increasingly wonders “how long he could stave off what he knew would follow. Each descent worse than the last.” A scene in which Tom holds Toby aloft as a child, during a Christmas Revels dance, serves as a well-drawn example of how Tom’s exuberance has a dangerous edge; so, too, do some of his worrying musings: “More and more his thoughts seemed to wander to the borderline, the edge of the beyond. What was out there?” His loved ones’ uncertainty about him, and his intentions, becomes a fitting element of this cross-cutting story, which effectively examines the wide-ranging impact of individual actions.
An ambitious and affecting interweaving of troubled characters’ lives.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780982904305
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Cobalt House, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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