A seriously funny take on death and dying.
When renowned Israeli economist Avishay dies at home alone of an apparent heart attack, his four best friends, like him almost 70, conspire to conceal his death for a week to keep him in the running for a Nobel Prize.
Avishay is a strong contender for the honor but needs to be alive when the Nobel committee makes its decision. Yehuda, who has lived in Avishay’s shadow despite becoming rich as a young man from his invention of a kitchen bag opener, proposes the scheme to keep him “alive.” How would they want Avishay remembered, he poses: as “a nice, divorced professor of economics who had a few friends who liked him” or “a man who will be immortalized”? Not to mention a man whose foreword to Yehuda’s yet unpublished book would ensure its success if it bore the Nobel imprint? Everyone has personal gains in mind. Zohara, a single, struggling ghostwriter who has been having an affair with the womanizing Avishay for 20 years, concocts a plan to grab a big share of the Nobel prize money by claiming she was his common-law wife. Keeping the death a secret proves as hairy as it is complicated, especially after an electric bicyclist runs over the dead body during an exasperating attempt to transfer it. As much as the book—the basis for a popular Israeli TV series—thrives on dark slapstick humor, it’s no Weekend at Avishay’s. Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as “one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,” and “sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness.” In the end, the absence of real mourning on anyone’s part can be read as an embrace of life beyond death or a reflection of the shells in which many people live.
A seriously funny take on death and dying.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780063310810
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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