Fine, uncompromising work likely to prompt admiration more than wholehearted appreciation.
The final manuscript by an elderly novelist whose memory is failing is the springboard for a meditation on the creative process and the loneliness of the writer’s life.
Dora Frenhofer was never a bestselling author, and over the years her “succession of small novels about small men in small crises” have sold fewer and fewer copies for smaller and smaller publishers. Now, 73 years old and isolated in her London home by the pandemic lockdown, she works desultorily on a new novel written in her own voice (“not pretending to be anyone else for a change”), with each chapter centered on a different character. These chapters alternate with diary entries that describe Dora’s experiences during the lockdown and end with various crossed-out sentences that eventually lead to the opening of the next chapter. Each chapter’s protagonist is someone connected to Dora: her estranged daughter, her brother, an immigrant hired to clear out her house, a fellow participant in a literary festival, a bicycle deliveryman, a former lover, and a longtime friend. She invents stories for them—an unrequited love, imprisonment and torture, the murders of two children—that are slowly revealed to be Dora’s embroidery of events from her own history. Or are they? Nothing is for certain in an intricately braided narrative that constantly suggests new possibilities about the factual underpinnings of fiction. The characters are viewed through Dora’s uncharitable eyes; the compassion for damaged souls that suffused such earlier Rachman novels as The Rise & Fall of the Great Powers and The Italian Teacher is still in evidence here, but it’s muffled by Dora’s brutally blunt judgments of their personal failings and professional failures—and her own. The interplay among various versions of the characters’ links to Dora is fascinating, and Rachman’s prose is lucid and elegant, as always. But the bleak tone throughout, culminating in an appropriately grim conclusion, makes this austere novel difficult to engage with emotionally.
Fine, uncompromising work likely to prompt admiration more than wholehearted appreciation.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780316552851
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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