An ambitious hospital saga with a worthy message of compassion undermined by a heavy-handed delivery.
Del Toro’s medical drama follows a young intern as he cares for a Jane Doe patient admitted after an opioid overdose.
Feeling burned-out, David Scholz intends to keep his head down and get through the end of his internship before taking a year off to travel prior to starting his ophthalmology residency. University Charity Hospital is an extremely busy place, and David’s patience is stretched to the breaking point. Despite this, he connects with an older patient whose surprising backstory serves as a reminder of the human side of his work. The story toggles back and forth between David’s interactions with this person and another patient identified as Jane Doe, juxtaposing the former, who is the picture of gratitude, with the latter, who is about as defiant as a patient can get. Jane even attacks David while going through withdrawal (a plot point that becomes significant later), but his compassion wins out in the end, and David continues working to break through her tough outer shell. As he does, the other doctors and nurses around him provide support and wisdom; one character distills one of the novel’s themes when he says, “Kindness’s greatest virtue is anonymity, but in a small hospital such as ours, few things go unnoticed.” Several aspects of the prose and plot keep readers at a remove, however. The text is crammed with medical jargon, which, while accurate to the setting, becomes distracting and alienating for readers without medical backgrounds. Characters rarely use contractions when speaking, making their dialogue sound like scripted lectures rather than natural conversations. Both of David’s primary patients turn out to be rather prominent public figures; this narrative turn, in addition to an abundance of coincidences that favor David’s growth and development, undercuts the narrative’s believability.
An ambitious hospital saga with a worthy message of compassion undermined by a heavy-handed delivery.Pub Date: April 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798989421008
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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