Endlessly fascinating characters propel these wonderfully ardent stories.
Mell’s story collection spotlights women navigating careers and relationships in New York City.
In the opening tale, “Serendipity,” Rachel still pines for Richard years after he was a visiting painter during her senior year at NYU. What will the two of them do if there’s still a spark, especially now that neither one is single? The author groups this book’s 13 stories into three parts, focusing on three women: Rachel, Emma, and Nina. Rachel’s relationships, sadly, don’t tend to fare well; for example, she struggles to forge an emotional connection with the former artist and “cokehead” Paul in “Decorative Arts.” Aspiring actor Emma makes ends meet waiting tables. She certainly doesn’t need her life complicated (as it is in the story “House-Sitting”) when her boyfriend leaves her without a place to stay and robbers single out the restaurant where she works. Nina’s career doesn’t improve much after her tenure as a “lackey” at Bloomingdale’s department store in the mid-1980s, and the antidepressants she takes only seem to exacerbate her mental anguish. Mell’s characterizations are superlative, starting with the trio of protagonists. They’re sympathetic people often at the mercy (or lack thereof) of outside forces, but when their professional and/or personal lives hit snags or outright fail, they stand firm. Many among the supporting cast are equally compelling, such as Rachel’s friend Lily, who periodically takes the narrative reins; waitress Tina, who harbors a romantic interest in Emma; and photographers Mick and Rob, each of whom shares a gleefully curious history with Nina. The author’s colorful descriptions animate numerous sights in Brooklyn and Manhattan: “Tomato soup red and yolky yellow, dense pistachio and limey greens, royal and cerulean blues, everything tinged with a dark undertone like forties newspaper comics.”
Endlessly fascinating characters propel these wonderfully ardent stories.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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