A well-told, deeply felt addition to a ghostly mystery series.
Charleston’s favorite ghost-talking divorcée returns in Alexander’s latest supernatural mystery, the second in a series.
Reluctant clairvoyant Tipsy Collins is still trying to figure out life as a single mother of three. She’s (mostly) quieted the ghosts that haunt her home, though one, Henry Mott, has decided to hang around and work on his memoir. Tipsy’s relationship with her boyfriend, Will Garrison, is beginning to sour, and though she’s gotten back into painting, she’s still close to broke. That’s why she drives out to Sullivan’s Island to meet with the slightly kooky Pamella Brewton about a possible commission. The cottage, painted from fence to shutters in that unmistakable Southern shade called haint blue, is haunted by Pamella’s deceased grandmother, Ivy More Brewton. Ivy, the story goes, fell off a dock in 1944, but Tipsy suspects it wasn’t that simple. Tipsy doesn’t want to get involved—she’s furious Will told Pamella about her psychic abilities—but when Pamella offers $50,000 for exorcising “Meemaw,” how can Tipsy refuse? She makes contact with Ivy, who insists she can’t leave the house without her “true love,” and she isn’t talking about Pamella’s grandfather. As Tipsy’s own romantic life crumbles, can she learn something about love and loss from this stubborn ghost? Alexander’s prose is precise and evocative, particularly when she’s describing the environments of coastal South Carolina: “Tipsy is on a dune on one of those random fall afternoons in the Lowcountry that feel like summer’s hangover. The tall grass around her is brownish. The remaining yellow and white flowers droop like the tongues of panting dogs.” The novel unfolds at a leisurely pace, driven by Tipsy and her relationships as much as by the haunting plot. Alexander, as in her previous installment, Charleston Green (2020), works in the tradition of Southern women’s fiction as much as in supernatural mystery, and she blends the two genres together into a seamless, not-too-heavy exploration of how difficult it can be to act once a relationship has run its course.
A well-told, deeply felt addition to a ghostly mystery series.Pub Date: April 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-704326-1
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Bublish, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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