A mostly satisfying variation on a familiar motif.
A new spin on the theme of entwined mothers and daughters.
Debut novelist Otis follows the unstable Charlotte and her driven daughter, Viva, an aspiring dancer, from an eventful stint on Cape Cod in 1979 when Viva is 11 through the next couple of decades, with flashbacks to Charlotte's fraught encounters with the man who will become, though he doesn't know it, Viva's father. Charlotte and Viva are, like many a fictional mother-daughter pair, “a society of two.” After the summer in Cape Cod, they move to California, where they stay with Charlotte's sister. Charlotte picks up a series of odd jobs, and Viva attends a performing arts high school and then college before moving to New York to start a career. When an accident brings that career to a halt, Viva returns to California and starts falling into the same self-destructive patterns that have stymied her mother even as her mother begins to experience ever more serious symptoms of mental and physical illness. While Viva is more sympathetic as a girl and a teenager than as an alcoholic 20-something with bad taste in men and no idea what to do with her life, and the subplot involving her father seems tacked on, Otis pays rapt attention not just to the two complicated women, but to the other characters with whom they interact, from the hippie couple with whom Charlotte shares a mutual dislike at their campground on Cape Cod to the longtime frenemy with whom Viva competes and the mean-spirited high school students she teaches in California. She steers ably away from cliché in what could easily have been a conventionally tense relationship between mother and daughter, documenting the ways in which both are distorted by the “umbilical cord” that stretches between them for decades but allowing them to be individuals with their own quirks and longings as well.
A mostly satisfying variation on a familiar motif.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798985282825
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Zibby Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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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