A compellingly orchestrated tale about two people finding each other after a disaster.
In this novel, two strangers meet in the wake of a major earthquake in California.
Daisetsu Hiro, one of the main characters in Seiler’s tightly constructed tale, is a renowned Japanese architect scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the International Architectural Conference in San Francisco. But Hiro receives a late-night phone call telling him the conference has been canceled due to a massive earthquake that struck the Bay Area. Hiro, a passionate student of earthquakes, decides to fly to California anyway. He is following in the metaphorical footsteps of a group of Japanese architects who traveled to San Francisco in the wake of the 1906 quake that devastated the city. Hiro arrives in a Bay Area still reeling from the disaster and the social unrest that followed. He impulsively saves a woman named Alice Eames from police brutality, and the two become friends while Hiro is in town to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency assess the damage to local buildings, including Alcatraz. This strand of the narrative is interwoven with the story of Jack London Black, a charismatic street musician who makes uncanny personal connections with his listeners (including, in a wonderfully rendered scene, with Alice herself). Black is shot and killed by police the morning after the quake. While Black’s story, told in part as a novel within a novel, is intriguing, Hiro is the book’s most thoughtfully crafted character. Hiro is someone who can inwardly criticize American provincialism (“He wondered if she knew about the Tohoku Tsunami,” he thinks at one point. “It always amazed him how people around the world knew 9/11, but Americans didn’t know 3/11”) but also sound convincing making sweeping pronouncements. “Nature is ever-changing, constantly on the move,” he tells an interviewer. “It is inevitable that a fixed position will be overtaken.” He strongly anchors this lean and intelligent story.
A compellingly orchestrated tale about two people finding each other after a disaster.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Wayfarer Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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