A compelling study of messy friendships and romantic relationships, and their long-lasting effects.
Friendship, romance, and rivalry entangle two Indian American boys and an Anglo-Irish girl in Gupta’s novel.
Yash Varna moves with his father from Toronto to Pittsburgh to start college after his mother dies. New to the area and living away from campus, Yash quickly befriends Jay Ahuja, a fellow Indian and pre-med student from the Pittsburgh suburbs. Despite surface similarities, Jay and Yashu couldn’t be less alike: Whereas Yash is shy, Jay is confident and outgoing, and while Yash is nervous around girls, Jay is a ladies’ man. The narrative explores how these two interact, particularly in the context of their various overlapping relationships with women. There’s Rachel, Yash’s first girlfriend in college, a childhood friend of Jay who may or may not have also dated Jay in the past. Then, there’s Darby Baccus, an Anglo-Irish girl from Reading, Pennsylvania, devoted to her family, especially her autistic brother, Hunter; Yash sees her one day and is awestruck, but they formally meet later while both he and Jay are coupled up. Tension builds as both Jay and Yash appear interested in Darby, and the novel adopts a will-they-won’t-they formula crossed with a modern take on Jules et Jim, eventually following all three out of college as they advance in their lives and careers. While Gupta’s prose can be overwrought (such as in the line, “my calves cramping up with lactic acid, begging for respite”) and redundant, the author is able to capture moments of genuine intimacy. The breakup scene between Rachel and Yash stands out as an understated but genuinely sweet, captivating moment of emotional honesty. This emotional grounding holds through to the novel’s conclusion, leading to a satisfying, if devastating, coda.
A compelling study of messy friendships and romantic relationships, and their long-lasting effects.Pub Date: June 26, 2023
ISBN: 978-1777230289
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Rexington Press
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2023
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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