Thoughtful, well-crafted poems that trace a path of self-discovery.
This debut poetry collection examines a trajectory from privileged and constrained girlhood to full maturity.
The 64 poems assembled here are grouped in three chronological sections, from childhood to the speaker’s elder years. The speaker and her family exist in a rarefied world (riding lessons, a visit to the White House) that’s strewn with traps. In the opening poem, “Road Trip,” a girl and her five sisters are “all naked in the backseat / of a 1957 Plymouth station wagon,” hot and uncomfortable on the trip to their grandfather’s house. The girls’ starched white dresses crackle in the way back: “Since we’re never / clean enough, we’ll be hauled out at a rest stop / to be straightjacketed into dresses and our mother’s / hope for acceptance.” Meanwhile, the girls’ brother “rides / shotgun and wears what he wants.” Watson’s narrative voice is deceptively simple, its underlying power achieved through such devices as well-calculated line endings that lend emphasis to words like never or that enact the poem’s movement, as when halting at a “rest stop.” The volume’s prose poems, in contrast, overflow their containers, giving a sense of pressured speech. Though many poems express anger or frustration, they also capture a growing appreciation of the speaker’s gifts: “Under the coral sweater / designed by Gianni Versace / sits my elegant heart beating.” Wry humor, too, leavens the collection. In the closing piece, “Adoption,” the speaker considers how well suited she would be to the British royal family: “I know how to dress and have beautiful table manners / and I really feel comfortable with a strict schedule.” The book includes a few photographs that provide a visual commentary, as with “Road Trip” being preceded by the image of a carefully dressed, beribboned girl.
Thoughtful, well-crafted poems that trace a path of self-discovery.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-936135-98-1
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Golden Antelope Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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