A character study that memorably chronicles one woman’s enduring will to succeed.
Fryd’s historical novel charts a Jewish woman’s experiences in 20th-century Europe.
In 1978, Walter Pierce Anderson makes quite a discovery after the death of his mother, Eva, who left behind diaries written in Yiddish; when Walter asks a family friend about what he’s found, he learns, “Your mom wasn’t…a German aristocrat, Wally. She was Chawa Demb, a Polish Jew who lost her family in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Auschwitz.” Walter has spent his whole life thinking he “descended from a long line of proud Scotsmen and correct Germans.” The diaries begin in 1920s Poland. Chawa lives in a small town called Przedecz. When her father informs her that she must stop going to school, she is furious— young Chawa has no desire to become a traditional housewife. She cooks up a scheme to continue learning while she tutors the local butcher’s son; she also finds a way to learn Polish in her spare time. Her language skills later help her to earn some money by working in a local tavern. Chawa thinks that perhaps she will eventually head to America. Instead, she marries a local man named Leon, and when the Germans invade Poland, Leon and Chawa are forced to hide in the home of a Polish farmer. After the end of the war, Leon is out of the picture and Chawa is in Paris. She meets a writer named Solomon Kozlowsky, who introduces her to his intellectual friends. Eva has something the intellectuals do not: the street smarts one gleans from spending years fighting to survive. She also has a driving desire to go to America.
This journey through time covers a lot of ground. Eva likes to stick to the facts when telling her story and doesn’t waste much time on embellishments. For instance, when she arrives in Paris, she writes of her condition, “I was starving, hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours, and looked forward to dinner at the soup kitchen.” She sums up her experience having a baby thusly: “I lay in a bright room on an immaculately clean bed, surrounded by two nurses and Dr. Wood, who gently directed me through the delivery.” The chapters move along smoothly as the reader remains curious about where Eva will go next and what sort of scheming will keep her alive and help her to overcome the many obstacles that always seem to be in her way. While readers know from the outset that she eventually settles in the United States as Eva Baum and has a son, the questions pertaining to precisely how this unfolds maintain tension in the narrative. The dialogue can read as flat—the characters are prone to making simple, obvious statements. A nurse says to Eva after she gives birth, “Glad to see you’re feeling better, dearie. Knew you would once you got to hold your baby.” When a character suspects something is wrong with Eva, they ask, “Is something the matter, Eva?” Ultimately, though, this plucky protagonist’s diaristic accounts of “small and large victories” leave an impression. This is an engaging, intimate tale about thriving under the most difficult of situations.
A character study that memorably chronicles one woman’s enduring will to succeed.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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