Marriage and divorce are always compelling, but despite strong prose, this novel feels shopworn.
From Hungarian author Halász comes this debut novel about a mother who leaves her controlling and violent husband only to waffle for months about whether to go through with divorcing him.
When the novel opens, Vera and her two small, unnamed daughters have already moved into her divorced father’s house, where her mother, Babika, visits frequently. Vera left her husband, Péter, after multiple incidents of verbal browbeating and physical violence that include locking her outside on the balcony and beating her on the head. Wanting her to return, Péter has reembraced Catholicism, an influence for all the characters, and pontificates on “the sanctity of marriage.” Vera is of several minds. She finds she still wants to please Péter but doesn’t trust his claim that he has changed. She also feels guilty about her affair with a childhood sweetheart; when her best (only?) friend, Andi, reminds her that Péter tried to strangle her, she answers “But I cheated.” Vera berates herself continually for her failures as a wife and, especially, a mother. Emotionally spiraling, she slips into a new, unhealthy relationship with a controlling actor, who draws her into his cocaine addiction. All along, she receives an enormous amount of support from those around her. Babika, Andi, marriage counselors, and Vera’s divorce lawyer all confirm that she is an abuse victim. The airless focus on Vera allows almost none of the other characters breathing room to develop. The exception is Babika, whose positivity and engagement with the world offer a sharp contrast to Vera’s dark self-absorption; when Babika invites Vera to a climate change protest, Vera announces, “I’m not interested in politics.” The larger implication—that Vera, a talented artist who’s sacrificed her ambition for marriage, has lost her voice—is spelled out when she reads The Little Mermaid to her daughters. The question is, can she recover it?
Marriage and divorce are always compelling, but despite strong prose, this novel feels shopworn.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781646222681
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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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