Although very little ties the two stories together, perhaps their shared thread of resolve is enough.
Two urgent stories of survival, set nearly 300 years apart, are connected by treks through Paris’ ancient underground tunnels.
In 17th-century France, dyer’s daughter Alouette Voland’s ambitions (she dreams of selling her own formulas for fabric hues) land her in Salpêtrière, a dread women’s madhouse. In mid-20th-century Paris, Dutch medical doctor Kristof Larsen finds his psychiatric practice disrupted by Nazi invasion. While their concerns and paths diverge, these characters share a commitment to truth and justice, qualities discouraged in their eras. Take, for example, the bigoted concierge of Kristof’s apartment building, or the elitist noblewoman who runs Salpêtrière, the rapist madhouse guards, and the nasty Gestapo officers—whether it’s 1664 or 1939, cruelty, greed, and self-interest spring up regularly in human history. Fortunately, so do kindness, compassion, and valor, all of which Alouette, Kristof, and their small bands of stalwart friends demonstrate as they seek to escape and help others, too. Since the dual-narrative structure presses urgently toward resolution for both groups, Alouette and Kristof’s friends seem less like secondary characters than people whose stories you’d like to learn more of when the time is right: Marguerite, who keeps a ledger of crimes by madhouse workers; Alesander Extebarria, Kristof’s Basque comrade who understands wartime subterfuge; and Sasha Brodsky, whose Jewish identity both destroys her once-placid life and gives her the determination to stay alive. The book opens after the terrible fire at Notre Dame de Paris in 2019, as a conservator finds an exquisite fragment of stained glass etched with a skylark. Alouette’s beloved, Étienne, is a miner who once carved a tiny stone skylark for her because of her name. Wisely, McLain does not force a skylark into Kristof and Sasha’s story, instead allowing this avian symbol to lightly land as a reminder of transcendent hope.
Although very little ties the two stories together, perhaps their shared thread of resolve is enough.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781668028155
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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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