A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.
A woman is hounded by accusations of witchcraft through 16th-century Denmark in this historically based novella.
“I am a child shaped in beeswax,” is how the narrator of this breathtaking short novel introduces itself. The narrator means this literally—it is a wax child, only “the size of a human forearm.” Its beloved maker, who it misses with a “bottomless, shaft-like longing,” is an impoverished Danish noblewoman named Christenze Kruckow, who lives in the luckless household of Anne Bille. Embittered by an unbelievable series of miscarriages or stillbirths, Anne accuses Christenze of witchcraft, the punishment for which is a gruesome death. Christenze flees to the larger town of Aalborg, taking the wax child with her. In Aalborg, Christenze, who never married, joins a lively society of women who gossip, sing, and repeat the folk lessons they have learned from their mothers as they perform the grueling labor of their lives. The wax child, who is present at many of these gatherings in the guise of a child’s toy, reports both the women’s talk and the feelings that seethe behind it—Christenze’s attraction to the “effervescent” Maren; the claustrophobic resentment of foolish Elisabeth, whose husband, the pastor Klyne, abuses her; the proud independence of the one-eyed widow Dorte; the cunning spirit of Apelone. Yet, in spite of the small protection afforded by her noble birth, the label of “witch” is not so quick to fall away from a woman content to live on her own. Spurred by the witch-hunting mania of King Christian IV and fanned by accusations from the malignant Klyne, Christenze is again accused of witchcraft and is thrown into the dungeons, along with Maren, Dorte, and Apelone, to await trial. Throughout it all, the wax child—who narrates from the distant future, the past, and the brutal present of the novella all at once—spins its own spellbinding tale of loss and longing as the true story of Christenze Kruckow weaves through language that makes what happened to her, and to so many other women like her, pulse with a clarity more real than fact.
A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780811238830
Page Count: 144
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
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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