A beautifully written exploration of identity, memory, power, and agency.
A missing woman’s past upends the lives of the women around her.
In Wasserman’s new novel, the author of Girls on Fire (2016) explores the lives of three women after one of them goes missing. Despite everyone telling her to move on, college student Alice is searching for her mother, who's disappeared. When she discovers her mother has gone missing before, she sets out to find her and the truth—which brings her to the door of Elizabeth Strauss. While working as a fellow at the Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research, Strauss, who at that time was going by the nickname Lizzie, was invited to join a once-in-a-lifetime project by “psychology’s latest golden god,” Dr. Benjamin Strauss (then her boss, now her recently deceased husband). The project? Studying Alice’s mother, aka Wendy Doe, a woman found on a bus without identification or memories, who's in a dissociative fugue state. Wendy’s perspective is also offered through lyrical diary entries in which she explores who she is, who she’s not, and what’s happening to her in the moment (which is all she has). Told in alternating perspectives by Alice, Elizabeth, and Lizzie, the novel is like a knot being slowly unraveled. While a bit disorienting at first, Wasserman’s choice to differentiate between Lizzie’s point of view (the past) and Elizabeth’s (the present) succeeds narratively and thematically. By offering one woman’s insights at different points in time, the novel explores the ways time, memory, and hindsight inform who we are and who we become. After completing an exercise where she lists every memory she’s had in the last two weeks, Lizzie realizes: “Almost everything that happens is forgotten. Decades swallowed. Maybe...the mystery isn’t why we forget some things and not others. Maybe the mystery is why we ever remember.” In addition to meditating on personhood and recollection, Wasserman deftly explores power dynamics, ambition, and the lingering scars of trauma.
A beautifully written exploration of identity, memory, power, and agency.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3949-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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