An impressive set of stories from a skilled observer of the human animal.
Men and women struggle to find the good in the bad in Davidson’s fiction collection.
Life can get serious fast. In the first story in Davidson’s newest collection, a man grapples with his ex-wife’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. His daughter wants him to let the woman move in with him, something he is loath to do—but when his ex-wife is found beaten and possibly raped in a city park, the stakes become significantly higher. In another story, a college campus budget analyst gets into an argument with a foreign photographer taking pictures of him on campus. The man turns out to be a visiting artist, and he wants to make the analyst the subject of his next project. The photographer compares himself to Kafka: “He was the poet of the bureaucracy. What he did in his fiction, I try to do with my lens. That is why I came to America.” A third tale follows a boy on a fishing trip with his father attempting to reciprocate the patriarch’s gruff efforts at bonding, stymied by a roiling resentment he feels about his parents’ recent divorce. Across six stories and one novella, Davidson follows characters learning to live in a world not as they want it to be, but as it is. Nowhere is this tension as apparent as in the title novella, in which a Buddhist monk quits his monastery after seven years and moves in with his surf bum brother. “You’re stepping back into the material world—lust, lies, and corruption!” the brother encourages him. “Only one way to do it. Jump in with both feet!” As the former monk grapples with the crises that led him into—and then away from—the monastery, he gleans an entirely different sort of wisdom from his far-from-enlightened brother. Davidson’s prose is by turns clever and soulful, capturing his characters at their most curmudgeonly before dragging them, often against their will, toward greater vulnerability. Though the novella is the strongest entry, there’s not a bad one here.
An impressive set of stories from a skilled observer of the human animal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781960329486
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Cornerstone Press
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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