This book is for readers seeking cerebral pleasures rather than drama.
A young Spanish woman confronts the loss of her mother to cancer and the loss of a lover in this memoir-like novel.
In the opening pages of this meditation on loss, the narrator—named Sara, like the author—is at a hotel rendezvous in Barcelona with the lover she calls “Girl” while her mother is dying in Asturias, where Sara plans to fly the next day. Her mother has lived with metastasized breast cancer for 10 years, Sara’s entire adult life, and Sara’s account of their time together in her mother’s last days is both tender and harrowing. Meanwhile, her affair with Girl is brief and intense, beginning in October, a few weeks after Sara moves to Barcelona from London, where her partner, Dani, remains, and ending in December, in the days between her mother’s death and Dani’s arrival in Barcelona. The affair ends because, once Dani is in town, Girl does not want to continue it; though she tries, Girl does not, like Sara, understand nonmonogamy: “that there can be different connections with different loves.” Sara is an academic (the move to Barcelona is for a teaching job), and her narrative style is often like that of an essayist; she makes observations such as, “The absence of bodies we’ve had passionate connections with is disconcerting,” before reflecting on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “susto,” or “frightening of the spirit.” Baudelaire, Jeanette Winterson, and Woolf are among other writers cited as Sara sifts through her feelings. At the same time, bodies are very much present on the page, including intimate depictions of lovemaking and an unflinching, anguished, and moving portrayal of the ravages of cancer and its treatment on her mother’s body.
This book is for readers seeking cerebral pleasures rather than drama.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781917260206
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Charco Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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 shaky balance between saccharine and sage will nevertheless appeal to the author’s fans and readers seeking balm.
An elderly man’s posthumous journey back through his life has unexpected consequences for several people, and lessons for everyone.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that readers adore any novel set in a reading group, bookshop, or library, from the terribly sad (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, 2008) to the puzzle-heavy (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, 2012) to the downright clever (The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, 2007). Haig, who’s already written The Midnight Library (2020), mines a similar vein in this novel centered on a bookseller named Wilbur Budd; place this one in the seriously sentimental category. Wilbur dies at 81 just after receiving a call from his ex-wife, Maggie. He finds himself on a classic steam-train carriage, accompanied by a younger version of the woman who founded the bookstore he turned into a global conglomerate. As Mrs. Agnes Bagdale explains, he’s on a trip to significant places and events from his life, but he’s forbidden from interfering in them, thus possibly changing the course of other people’s lives. True to his maverick tendencies, Wilbur struggles with the three rules of the train (“You get on and off the train as required. You never try and speak to yourself. And you must never be there when you fall asleep”) and struggles even more mightily as he realizes that Maggie was his true love and lifelong lodestar. While some moments verge on maudlin, as when Wilbur and Maggie goggle at Venice during their honeymoon, these are tempered by quieter observations, as when Wilbur’s oldest friend, Charlie, tells him frankly during lunch at a trendy restaurant that his constant ambition is a failing. This isn’t a subtle book and it’s not trying to be; it’s urging readers to think about their own choices, wherever they find themselves.
A shaky balance between saccharine and sage will nevertheless appeal to the author’s fans and readers seeking balm.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9780593833377
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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