Refreshingly tart reflections on family fragmentation and its aftershocks.
A finely detailed debut collection of stories set in Canada from the 1960s to the present.
Alward often begins in a sharply evoked past time and then swoops forward into the present to record the impact of a past experience on her characters. In the brief and evocative title story, she opens in the seemingly familiar territory of a party in the 1970s that is being observed by children exiled upstairs while “the grownups put on their party clothes and seemed to forget us.” In her bedroom, the narrator, 10 or 11 at the time, is visited by one of her parents’ friends, and what might have gone horribly wrong doesn’t only because her brother appears at the door. Decades later, her parents divorced, the narrator finds herself inexplicably seeking this man “in beer cellars and dance halls and country-and-western bars.” Two of the stories view a similarly splintered nuclear family from radically different angles. In “Old Growth,” Gwyneth takes a road trip with her ex-husband, Ray, to check out some land he intends to buy, while in “Bear Country,” set a few years earlier but appearing later in the collection, Ray, in the family cabin soon to be sold, spends the summer with his troubled teenage son while a bear lurks nearby. Alward is a master of near disasters: “Bundle of Joy” starts out as a satire about a critical mother going for a visit to meet her infant grandson and complaining about the infant’s short legs and her son-in-law’s beard, which reminds her of “a neglected box hedge.” As grandma Ruth consumes ever more alcohol, the story veers into an account of an accident involving the child and then takes an unexpected turn into sympathy for Ruth. With a coolly dispassionate voice, Alward views the small horrors of domesticity, “the ungodly screech of the Fisher-Price phone as its bulbous eyes rolled back” or the creaking strain on a marriage inflicted by the necessity of removing six layers of wallpaper, and turns them into stories whose implications reverberate far beyond the walls of any home.
Refreshingly tart reflections on family fragmentation and its aftershocks.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781771965620
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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