A captivating collection of poetry about hearth and home.
A volume of poetry focuses on life in Scotland and Canada.
Groundwater was born in Orkney, one of Scotland’s many islands, but immigrated to Ontario as a child. There, her father struggled to support a large family. As an adult, following her father’s death, the author returned to her family’s homeland, once with her mother and another time with her daughter. This collection of poems begins with one such homecoming. Groundwater visits the room above the family bake shop where she was born, marvels at the Ring of Brodgar, and rides the Jacobite Steam Train. Harkening back to her youth in a rented cottage in Ontario, she describes the “smell of bleach on my mother’s kitchen hands / over ripe bananas, vinyl tablecloth / upstairs clean sheets spread / over mattresses stained with summer sweat / and we lay near naked in our beds / under the heat-baked beams.” The poet recalls her grandmother’s handkerchiefs, “fragrant with flowery scent,” and recounts the various pianos her father played during her childhood. “Geese Heard At Night,” a poem organized in V-formation, follows those “dark travellers / across a brimstone moon / phantoms flying / before / the shrouding snow.” The second section of the book takes place at the poet’s newly acquired country house in Essex, Ontario, where she is reminded of the pains and pleasures of rural life. Groundwater’s vivid language leaps off the page in lines like “it seemed the savage wind / could grasp the very mosses / from their crags / and fling them to the foam.” She deftly captures the “rugged beauty of the landscape” of both Scotland and Ontario, painting a clear and breathtaking portrait of her life. The poet’s love for her family is palpable. In “My Father,” she tenderly remembers her dad “smiling at me when I pushed / up under his paper / taking the pens from his pocket / so I could lean against his heart.” Only rarely does a line or an image feel recycled: “Firemen feed the firebox with coal, / the glowing cinder and flame heat / the belly of the boiler.”
A captivating collection of poetry about hearth and home.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1039116443
Page Count: 186
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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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