A slow fuse leads to a climactic flashpoint, putting all sorts of notions about life and art into fresh perspective.
Jangly nerves, obsessive ruminations, and a chance encounter lead a renowned film director toward unsettling developments and an unexpected epiphany.
This taut, allusive, and illuminating novel explores creativity and receptivity—the processes through which we make art and experience it. The unnamed narrator is a throwback auteur, one of the last who still shoots on film and protects the integrity of his vision against marketplace pressures and outside influence. With affection and respect, he is called “maestro” by all, including his cast and his longtime production collaborators. The novel concerns his return to an Italian film festival with his highly anticipated adaptation of William Maxwell’s novel The Folded Leaf. Among those joining him are actors Lorien and Tom, whom he generally calls “the boys” and whose careers will likely receive huge boosts from the reception the film is expected to receive. Yet the director is all jitters, unsure of that reception and of what he will do next. He takes refuge in an espresso bar, where he encounters a woman who recognizes him and who proceeds to tell (and show) him a story that will pervade the novel and, he eventually comes to hope, become his next film. With psychological acuity, the novel shows the subtle changes in their relationship, in his relationship with his two main actors (who have fallen in love after their roles in his movie brought them together), and in his love for and dependence on his husband and their young son, who remain at home while he is at the festival but are very much present in his mind. The result is a novel about a film, about a filmmaker who has adapted a novel, and about a piece of visual art and the tragic story behind it that the filmmaker fixates upon as his next project.
A slow fuse leads to a climactic flashpoint, putting all sorts of notions about life and art into fresh perspective.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-646051-80-9
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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