These tales offer unquestionably sharp writing, but they repeatedly go over similar ground.
A collection of short stories explores marriage, fidelity, restlessness, and desire.
Each of this volume’s 14 tales features female protagonists, many of whom are in their 60s. The opening story, “Framing the Picture,” is a meditation on life and death, focusing on a woman whose husband goes through emotional changes when his mother falls ill. The couple decide to take her and her companion into their home, which leads to a stark reevaluation of their own relationship. The following tale, “Hurricane,” introduces Alice, a social worker and writer, and Douglas, a university history professor, a married couple whose lives begin to take divergent paths. When Alice’s affair with an aspiring healer fails to provide the comfort in life she is missing, she considers a drastic exit strategy. In “Sleuth,” Helen begins a relationship with a married man and, despite being in love with him, tries online dating in her quest for companionship in New York City. Meanwhile, in “Artifacts,” a 67-year-old woman also joins a dating website and attempts to navigate the “labyrinth” of possible relationships. Wineberg creates psychologically realistic characters by delivering concise, revealing glimpses into their psyches: Helen “felt adrift, constructing a new life, facing the visceral realization that there was more time behind her than ahead.” The author is keenly observant, and the collection is punctuated with many fine descriptive passages: “An old, bent woman with gray hair, who hobbles with a cane and wears a long brown raincoat and black orthopedic shoes, clumsy as boats.” But despite being well crafted, the stories prove thematically repetitive. “Framing the Picture” and “We Worry About the Wrong Things” deal with parental illness and “Sleuth” and “Artifacts,” with online dating. This allows Wineberg to approach such subjects from a variety of angles, but the tales often read like scant reworkings of the same plot. Even with regard to description, in which the author often excels, character sketches can also prove repetitive, with a reliance on adjectives like bulky. The collection lacks the necessary variation to maintain readers’ attention. Wineberg is a skilled writer, and this book may well appeal to women facing similar challenges, but in terms of scope, it misses the mark.
These tales offer unquestionably sharp writing, but they repeatedly go over similar ground.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-947175-56-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Serving House Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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