A thoughtful tale of friendship, emotionally affecting and intelligently composed.
A young Austrian woman leaves home to study the violin against the objections of her father and finds comfort in an unlikely friendship in this debut historical novella.
Nicolette Stolicz is born in Vienna at the conclusion of World War II, just before Austria is liberated from the Nazi occupation. Both of her grandfathers were members of the Nazi Party, their political allegiances a hard reality for her father, Josef, to accept since he loathed Hitler and “scorned his countrymen who accepted a serpent as savior.” A talented musician, he refused to play in Hitler’s orchestra and was shot in the hand for his insolence. The war created a deep schism within Nicolette’s family, one she exacerbates when she asks her grandmother for money so she can study the violin in Chicago, a decision her father interprets as a profound betrayal. While in the United States, Nicolette finds work as a cleaning woman and befriends Tillie, an African American woman whose husband, Jimmy, was killed in Normandy. Drancik poignantly chronicles the burgeoning friendship between the two, one that becomes an important source of solace for both, especially for Nicolette when she finds herself in trouble with no one to turn to. The author depicts with an uncommon amalgam of power and restraint the two women’s relationship; in the late 1960s, the echoes of the bigotry Jews experienced in Austria movingly evoke the prejudice Tillie confronts in Chicago. In addition, Drancik’s prose is quietly elegant and, like Nicolette’s character, quickly vacillates between sleepily laconic and unabashedly angry. But the short work as a whole strains for a didactic lesson, and that laboriousness feels like literary condescension, especially at the story’s end, which seems a bit trite and sententious.
A thoughtful tale of friendship, emotionally affecting and intelligently composed.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950730-59-9
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2021
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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