An endearing narrator and surprising turns elevate this novel’s cycles of abuse, addiction, and recovery.
Edwards’ novel traces a woman’s descent into the world of drug trafficking and her search for a better life.
“You made your bed. Now go lie in it,” says Ava Harrison’s harsh mother when her daughter seeks help to escape her abusive marriage. After a childhood of neglect and emotional abuse in New Jersey, Ava marries Tom in 1963, only to discover that they will never make the loving home she craves when Tom beats and rapes her on their wedding night. As a naturally gifted performer, Ava eventually finds liberation through the easy money of dancing at the local club, Gentlemen’s Delight, and she manages to escape her marriage with her two young sons. With hippie drug culture in full swing, it isn’t long before Ava relies on a combination of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol to fuel her performances and get through her days. After losing custody of her children, she meets her second husband, a loving but lazy stoner named Jack Novak, and the charming Mike Ambrose—a drug trafficker who draws Ava into his world of international smuggling. From Colombia to Kenya, Ava follows Mike into a wild existence very different from her humble beginnings—one with extreme consequences. Edwards immediately captures readers’ sympathy for Ava from the moment she describes her childhood spent as an average girl who just wants her parents’ love and approval. Each of Ava’s increasingly terrible decisions flows logically from her history and the societal pressures on women of the time; it’s hard not to empathize. The novel’s first-person narration has a flowing, conversational style, but it can feel a bit flat at times—in some chapters, it’s as if Ava is merely summarizing large swaths of her life for readers rather than immersing them in her experience. However, some truly harrowing scenes involving abuse, drug smuggling, and foreign prisons all ratchet up the tension and will keep readers engaged along her long road to redemption.
An endearing narrator and surprising turns elevate this novel’s cycles of abuse, addiction, and recovery.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 424
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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