Strong postapocalyptic worldbuilding supports a gripping family drama.
Feltman’s final novel in a speculative trilogy tells a tense, intimate postapocalyptic story of familial conflict, set in the subway tunnels of what used to be New York City.
The Colony of New York, built underneath the ruins of the city following the great hurricane of 2085, faces mounting challenges as the 24th century draws to a close. Violent gangs draw in disillusioned youths. Increasingly frequent tremors (“The earth surrounding the tunnels was warming, shifting and changing”) damage buildings and cause pipes to leak or burst. Air quality is on the decline, leaving people fatigued and unable to work. Dealing with all of these problems would be enough for Manny Stewart, the Colony’s police commissioner and one of its wealthiest citizens, but he must also deal with his son, Zach, who’s become increasingly defiant and seems to have come under the sway of bad influences. Manny’s desperation to keep Zach out of trouble, combined with his own trauma of growing up with an abusive alcoholic father, causes him to come down harder and harder on his son—but the more he tries to control him, the more he resists. The generational conflicts reflect the tension between anxiety and hope that pulls at the Colony as it seeks its future. Feltman’s postapocalyptic setting is well developed and filled with the just the right amount of detail to make it feel lived in, without inundating the reader with minutiae. However, much to the novel’s credit, the setting mostly serves as a backdrop to a taut, unflinching portrayal of a difficult father-child relationship with high stakes that extend well beyond their home. Feltman excels at ratcheting up tension, but she also finds hope in unexpected places, leading to some hard-earned, authentically joyous and optimistic moments. Manny, in particular, is a memorable protagonist, often difficult to like but ultimately deserving of the reader’s admiration.
Strong postapocalyptic worldbuilding supports a gripping family drama.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781737164258
Page Count: 255
Publisher: ANJ Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
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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