EVENSONG

Older women grapple with changes in their lives and in Pittsburgh’s East End.

Quarrelsome but inseparable sisters-in-law Emily and Arlene will be familiar to readers of three previous novels about the Maxwell family (Henry, Himself, 2019, etc.); they are joined here by two other core members of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a social and mutual aid organization for senior citizens. At 63, Susie is “the baby of the group,” still active in their church choir (the rest have aged out) and building a new life after a divorce. Harassed Kitzi, whose husband has severe heart disease and needs considerable care, finds herself de facto leader of the club after their president, Joan, takes a bad fall and is hospitalized. There’s lots to deal with: The HDs have a long list of neighbors who need to be taken to doctors’ appointments, have prescriptions picked up or meals delivered. O’Nan, whose 18 previous novels range from gritty accounts of working-class life to international political thrillers, skillfully shifts among four points of view as he chronicles the HDs’ activities from September 2022 to January 2023. Kitzi frets about neglecting her husband as she gets enmeshed in the affairs of an elderly couple who live in squalor amid an army of cats and are threatened with eviction. Susie, tending to Joan’s apartment and cat, wages a covert power struggle with Joan’s daughter, whose visits from Austin, Texas, aren’t frequent or long enough for the disapproving HDs. Arlene struggles with increasingly serious memory lapses while Emily, though clearly worried about her, serves mostly as a crochety voice at HD meetings. This frank depiction of people nearing the ends of their lives might sound bleak, but O’Nan’s brilliantly rendered characters refuse to be pitied, matter-of-factly accepting loss and physical decline as they go about their days quietly sustained by their faith and commitment to service.

Unsentimental yet deeply moving: more wonderful work from the versatile, masterful O’Nan.