An admirably ambitious—sometimes to a fault—and beautifully told story of intersecting lives and histories.
Tomkins chronicles various connected lives across different timelines over the span of nearly 80 years in this sweeping novel.
In 1956, Charlotte Bradbury snaps photos at a London airport, trying to get a little “transcontinental glamour by osmosis…She has no ticket—at least not one that’s still valid.” A year earlier, Stanley Smith met the lovely Alice Mortimer at a carnival, managing to introduce himself and have a lovely interaction despite his stutter and asthma. In 2010, Michael Marston is enduring a grueling separation from his wife, who’s accused him of excessive drinking and is keeping him from his young son, Ethan. A writer who focuses on aviation, specifically on plane crashes and their excavations, Michael escapes his domestic dramas to travel to Iceland and work on his new book. He’s trying to solve an Icelandic wartime mystery by locating a plane that “vanished into thick air.” One year earlier, Montague Freeman lived in his late mother’s house near Heathrow, dealing with a longstanding fear of new people and reflecting on his father’s abandonment of the family; in one of the many dizzying loops through which the author starts connecting his various characters’ lives, that father is revealed to be none other than Geoffrey Freeman, an aviation consultant who knows Michael well and who was once photographed at the same airport by Charlotte Bradbury. Tomkins then introduces readers to Frank and James Carter, a father and son also unknowingly photographed by Charlotte in 1956, shortly before they boarded a flight to Scotland and flew into a storm that would have rippling effects far into the future.
As those effects are slowly fleshed out in each storyline, Tomkins delves deeply into a wide cast of supporting characters and rich subplots. Charlotte remains a consistent standout throughout, and the author features her in some of his most striking passages. As a former wartime nurse, her tales are filled with harrowing moments, like the extraordinarily rendered bombing of a hospital: “Did she hear the outside world, or her own damaged eardrums? Walls continued to collapse, ceilings to cave in.” Charlotte’s heartbreak is beautifully conveyed as she yearns for the lost love of her life, Viktor: “pain also compacts, taut and compressed; calcifying, ossifying, petrifying. It thins, but in doing so, hardens to dense granite.” As poetic and beautiful as Tomkins’ prose is throughout, several storylines, such as Montague’s emotional struggles or the dissolution of Michael’s marriage, feel superfluous, overlong, and too busy with detail, often bringing the story back down to earth. The connections across space and time are what really spark and make the novel fly, such as the jarring juxtaposition of a worn-down contemporary airline terminal against its jet-set promise of the 1950s. (“Decades ago, this represented the future. Modernist brick and brutal cement, the concrete planters, full of greenery and life; the planters now gone, the shiny pointed cement now dull, and the brickwork heavy with mottles and the unsightly efflorescence of ageing, like liver spots for building materials.”)
Pub Date: March 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798883548054
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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