Subtle, poignant stories from a writer who deserves to be remembered—and read.
Sixteen stories from a mid-20th-century master sadly fallen out of print, selected and introduced by Colm Toíbín.
American-born Irishwoman Lavin’s psychologically complex portraits were beloved by critics (the New York Times called her “magnificent”) and fellow writers, but since her death in 1996 her work has receded from view. This is in part because those stories aren’t heavily plotted or crowded with event (a criticism Lavin has great fun with here in “A Story With a Pattern”); in part because the work consists of minutely detailed, compelling portraits of ordinary people, often in provincial County Meath; and probably most of all (Joyce Carol Oates once remarked that the stories are set in “what I hope is the past”) because Lavin specializes in minute and intricate explorations of the interior lives of middle class, often isolated women. Several of the strongest entries center on widowhood, among these “In the Middle of the Fields,” “In a Café,” “The Cuckoo Spit,” and “The Long Ago,” which features a woman whose life is built around the “widowhood” she claims after her beau forsakes her for another woman and then dies young…a widowhood into which she settles for decades as she awaits—almost recruits—her friends to join her. Often the stories feature an intense, long-term cross-gender relationship in which one or both deny or downplay that intensity—unpersuasively to both themselves and the reader—by pointing to the absence of sex. Lavin is especially gifted at exploring missed and mangled connections between lonely people, and at showing the ways women in patriarchal midcentury Ireland mount subtle but stout resistance to the master plots of marriage and gender expectations. One highlight that combines several of these themes is “Happiness,” in which an aging mother and widow (attended for years by a cranky and devoted priest, and by her daughters) makes the insistent assertion of her happiness—effortful happiness—the center of her life, the redoubt that must be protected at all costs. Is she lying to herself, compensating? The story’s triumph is in the way, without ever sentimentalizing her, Lavin makes her protagonist not a delusional sufferer or a figure of fun but—provisionally, complexly, sadly—a kind of hero. Happiness is the hill she will die on. She chose it herself.
Subtle, poignant stories from a writer who deserves to be remembered—and read.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668098714
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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 touching portrait of courage and friendship.
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie’s father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa’s more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active—to his own detriment and that of his family’s welfare. When Ellie’s mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls’ adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie’s well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa’s commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls’ story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy—even in close friendships—and the role of the shir zan, the courageous “lion women” of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668036587
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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