Fans of both Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler are likely to enjoy this satisfying, unhurried novel.
Good things can happen to lonely hearts and wounded families. Here's how.
Herman's latest novel assembles an accomplished cast of characters: a successful stage magician, a major American novelist, a published poet, a talented student poet and her world-wise single mother, a cockatiel, and, eventually, a precocious baby. As gifted as they may be, at the outset, things aren't going particularly well for most of them. The famous novelist, Martin Lieberman, is hit the hardest. Shortly before Thanksgiving he is abruptly abandoned by his wife; hearing this news, his teenage magician son, Jacob, decides not to come home from college. This means Jacob's cockatiel, Dolores, who was being cared for by his mother, is abandoned as well, and in fact Martin has no more idea than the bird of why all this has happened to him. The published poet, Jill Rosen—the protagonist of Herman's Dog (2005)—is less drastically miserable, but her life is not turning out quite as she might have hoped: She's aging, still single, and less successful than some of her friends. She does enjoy teaching, particularly when the student is as gifted (and worshipful) as Caroline Forester. The Kokosing State campus, where Jill teaches, where Jacob and Caroline are students, where Martin is a guest lecturer, turns out to be a fortuitous locale, as the characters cross paths there and begin to become part of each other's lives. Herman, who's noted for her writing about relationships, takes the time to bring every corner of this fictional world to life, including excerpts of all the writers' writings (they're good!), the evolution of Jacob's magic act, details about Martin's post-divorce linen closet, and the ongoing (and unexpectedly central) role of the pet bird. Almost all the characters change in interesting ways, but the depiction of Martin's transformation, as unlikely as it may be for a great man like him, is particularly generous and moving.
Fans of both Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler are likely to enjoy this satisfying, unhurried novel.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-57890-528-0
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Columbus State University Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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