Full of ideas, plot, verve, interesting scenes, and good writing, but just a little too full. A writer to watch.
A small-town Maine librarian gets into a peck of trouble.
Plot #1: Maeve Cosgrove is called to her supervisor’s office, where a woman from the Office of Family and Child Services has come to talk to her. One of the library’s regular visitors, a teen named Libby, has filed a complaint: Maeve has been watching her have sex with a boy in one of the library’s bathroom stalls. The girl is in foster care, and the boy is developmentally delayed, and Maeve insists it didn’t happen, but eventually it seems it more or less did, sort of. Maeve might be let off the hook, but if she wasn’t obsessed with the girl before, she certainly is now, and then she loses her job anyway, supposedly due to budget cuts. Welcome to Plot #2: Maeve has been writing letters to Harrison Riddles, a famous author who summers in Maine. She’s told him all about her beloved library and co-workers. Now, it turns out, he’s going to write a book based on the life of Willie, a Sudanese refugee who’s the boyfriend of Maeve’s fellow librarian Katrina. Since Maeve’s husband is perennially out of town on business and her daughter has flown the nest, Maeve, now jobless, is available to get very tangled up in this other situation. It takes a while to sink in that she is not an easy person to root for, but once it does, it complicates an already overcomplicated book, which touches on everything from abuse and empathy to literary appropriation, ventriloquizing, and the idea of the Magical Negro. A few chapters are narrated in first person by the characters, and toward the end the book floats the idea that it’s been authored by a real-life Maeve, hiding her secrets “in plain sight,” and then a strange last chapter suggests—well, you’ll have to figure it out.
Full of ideas, plot, verve, interesting scenes, and good writing, but just a little too full. A writer to watch.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781324051046
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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