A literary misfire soaked in 1990s musical nostalgia.
A reviled musician chases clues that her former bandmate and husband is alive and searches for him, accompanied by an unexpected party.
In 1999, 17-year-old Henrietta Vögel listens to a radio broadcast commemorating five years since Elijah Hart, “front man of the multiplatinum-selling husband-and-wife duo, the Lightning Bottles,” disappeared in Iceland. Jane Pyre, Elijah’s disgraced bandmate and wife, arrives in rural Wölf, Germany, and discovers that the secluded farmhouse she purchased as an escape has a close neighbor—none other than Hen, who insists that Elijah is alive and trying to communicate with Jane via street art, convincing Jane that they have to follow the clues in the art to find him. Lengthy flashbacks that start 10 years earlier show Elijah and Jane, born Janet Ribeiro, bonding and falling in love from 2,400 miles apart via music-focused BBS chat rooms and lengthy letters. Jane travels to Seattle to be with Elijah and they form the Lightning Bottles, though their romance and rise to fame are plagued by friendship drama, family tragedy, sexism against Jane, a legal battle over song ownership, and addiction. Some readers might be pleased to recognize real influential people (William Orbit, Steve Albini, a female musician clearly based on Sinéad O’Connor) and places (Sin-é, Central Saloon) in the Seattle music scene of this era. The costs of fame, especially addiction, are huge themes throughout the book, so it’s unfortunate that the writing around addiction is grating. The pacing of the novel is also terrible—the improbable scavenger hunt in the late 1990s is overshadowed by the sections charting the Lightning Bottles’ rise to and fall from fame, and multiple major would-be conflicts or revelations are summarized and resolved in mere paragraphs. Readers looking to indulge their nostalgia may find something worth discovering in these pages; anyone searching for quality prose should look elsewhere.
A literary misfire soaked in 1990s musical nostalgia.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781668015766
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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