A relatable cast navigates familiar scenes in thoroughly absorbing ways.
Everyday circumstances ruffle the lives of family members, friends, and rivals in Fortunato’s short story collection.
“At the Wedding or Haikus and Our-kus” finds computer programmer Peter falling for his co-worker Miryam; he even contemplates marriage, although the fact that he’s a devout Catholic and she’s Orthodox Jewish could make things difficult. The greatest problem, though, is that Miryam is set to wed someone else, and soon. In “The Personal Statement,” college seniors Sam and Elizabeth apply to the same graduate school. Elizabeth’s required personal statement aims for sincerity, but Sam tries something offbeat, which could make all the difference. On the surface, Fortunato’s characters seem immersed in routine. A closer look, however, reveals their struggles and worries; for example, one man’s familiar walk home from work turns into an unusual journey, as he’s constantly lost in his head, and a New Yorker awaiting a meetup with a friend thinks back to the pair’s lifetime of relentless competition. Along the way, friends do things that villains might do, and enemies prove they’re not such bad people. In “The Great Silence,” for instance, young Andrew and Maya’smother, Doris, takes them to a vacation cottage while their father is on a nuclear submarine tour. Most siblings would be pleased that Mom is happy, but it seems that nothing will shake Doris from her perpetually joyful state. For sport, Andrew and Maya decide to test her to see how long she’ll stay content if they “make her life miserable.”
Fortunato compiles 19 tales that share some similarities: many characters live in New York or New Jersey, and a surprising number work in computer programming. Nevertheless, the situations in which they find themselves are a lively assortment, whether they involve a lost loved one, a prisoner on death row, or a spiritual center’s newest member, whose past may be too wild for the celibate membership to accept. Several tales have intriguing hints of the supernatural, as well; the title story, for one, features a mirror that shows people who they really are—not just their superficial reflection. In one of the collection’s best entries, “Grythomoresome,” a 41-year-old nurse named James has an imaginary friend, who’s also a Martian, and who acts as a voice of reason in James’ life. What will the friend’s advice be regarding James’ fears about his adult nephew, who’s been spending time with his 5-year-old daughter? The author’s prose uses brevity to great effect at times, as in a description of a party: “The music was low, there was a bit of subdued dancing, lots of drinking, Lorraine had made great food and there was lots of talking. I’m not sure how but she got more than forty people in at one time with people constantly leaving and arriving.” In the same vein, the book’s shortest narratives most effectively showcase dynamic characters, such as the friends and co-workers in “It Is What It Is,” who discuss marriage woes and quickly shift their focus to the banality of the story’s titular expression.
A relatable cast navigates familiar scenes in thoroughly absorbing ways.Pub Date: May 15, 2026
ISBN: 9798995190806
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2026
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
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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