A touching tale that balances love, loss, and family drama.
Secrecy and deep sorrow complicate new beginnings in Kamata’s novel, told through the eyes of three women.
In 2021, Olivia Hamada, a newly unemployed American living in Japan, is grieving the loss of her brother, Ted, and hiding her divorce from everyone—including the 18-year-old twins whom she had with her Japanese ex-husband. It’s been more than a year since Ted’s unexpected death and pandemic travel restrictions have lifted, allowing Olivia, a former English-language writing instructor, and her children to travel to the United States to spread the last of Ted’s ashes and spend the summer with his widow, Parisa Hubbard, at her idyllic South Carolina beach house. Parisa, a successful fashion designer whose creations are inspired by her South Asian heritage, is ready to embrace a fresh chapter, but, fearing that she’ll upset Ted’s family, she keeps her big plans to herself. Lastly, readers meet Sophie, Olivia’s deaf daughter, who attends a specialized high school with only 12 students and is craving new experiences. Her wish is granted when she meets the eye-catching Dante, sparking a sweet, summer romance. Sophie vows to keep the relationship hidden, but this proves to be surprisingly difficult. When Olivia has a run-in with Devon Richards, a now-famous country singer from her past, she’s unable to resist their sizzling mutual attraction, which they must keep secret. At times, Kamata’s novel leans too heavily on backstory. However, the short chapters dedicated to each character, and tender moments interspersed with messy, rom-com-worthy entanglements, will keep readers intrigued. Lush images of sand and surf offer a breezy escape from tougher emotional scenes: “Farther up the beach, beyond the waving grass, people were gathering on decks and porches, firing up their grills, popping open bottles of beer, hanging their wet towels over railings.” References to Japanese and Indian traditions also enrich the pages. Kamata delicately weaves heartbreak with humor throughout the story, and authentically captures the complex inner lives of women at various stages navigating wildly different obstacles.
A touching tale that balances love, loss, and family drama.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 7, 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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