A richly detailed but uneven tale about the marriage of a psychologist and a psychiatrist.
A novel focuses on the strained relationship of two California psychotherapists.
Lingen centers his tale on psychologist Petter Lyngen and his wife, psychiatrist Thea Elden. The author, a licensed clinical psychologist, shows how they navigate not only the turmoil of their own marriage, but also the demands of their separate practices and all of the patients they interact with every day. Petter and Thea live in a condo in San Francisco’s Marina district and have been in couples therapy for a whole range of problems between them, including Petter’s buried resentment that Thea makes more money than he does and is better educated (she went to Stanford; he attended California State). Despite these and other issues, the couple seem reasonably happy at the start of the story, bantering, showering together, and enjoying long bike rides. Through them and their patients, Lingen is able to dramatize a wide variety of psychological complaints as well as the office politics and inner workings of psych departments and treating hospitals. Readers also get an extensive guided tour of the psychological backgrounds and key developmental issues faced by both Petter and Thea, including a shared history of parental abuse. This material helps ground them in the imagination as they face an array of people with psychological troubles as well as their own complicated feelings for each other
These glimpses into the professional world of psychotherapy are related with the detail and confidence that only an insider could provide. Lingen imbues some of his professional and interpersonal scenes with a very dry sense of humor, a tone that extends to the book’s abundant sexually explicit content. But the potential for a great psychology novel is blunted by several narrative flaws, starting with the work’s self-indulgent length (595 pages). Petter and Thea are seldom rendered as actual human beings; too often they’re depicted as stereotypes, calling each other “my love” while lounging in their condo living room reading their professional journals. Thea employs her “brilliant medically analytic mind” and reels off stiff exposition like “Ketamine enhances domaminergic neurotransmission to NMDA receptor sites in both the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.” At one point, she asserts to her husband: “As you are always saying, Petter…you can’t secure a hook inside someone’s chest unless there is something in there upon which you can secure the hook.” This decision to portray Petter and particularly Thea as vamping, hyperintellectual androids—him a passive-aggressive snob and her a controlling bully—undercuts the effectiveness of the story in humanizing the world of professional psychology. Likewise, the author’s choice to have characters lapse almost at random into all-caps profanity almost always seems forced and artificial, further driving a wedge between the players and the audience’s empathy. The characters are forever dissecting their motivations for doing the things they do, but the narrative seldom gives readers reasons to care about those actions.
A richly detailed but uneven tale about the marriage of a psychologist and a psychiatrist.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-830131-6
Page Count: 608
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2020
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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