Neurasthenic and melancholic but a central work of modern Danish literature.
A brooding collection of stories by the iconic Danish writer.
Ditlevsen, who died in 1976, was no stranger to misery: Addicted to drugs and alcohol, she was committed to psychiatric care several times. Many of the characters she depicts in this slender volume of stories could use professional care themselves. In the opening story, a young woman who “had never demonstrated a special talent of any kind” longs for just two things in life: a man and an umbrella. She attains the first, but the second is slower to arrive. “Sometimes she would lie awake next to Egon, or in her bed in the maid’s room in the house where she worked, nursing her peculiar dream of owning an umbrella,” writes Ditlevsen, and when the woman finally does pull the money together to buy an inexpensive bumbershoot, her enraged husband breaks it over his knee. There the story ends, and one can imagine the couple living miserably ever after. In another story, an aging woman despises any reminder that she will one day die yet introduces a prospective daughter-in-law to everyone in her family, the dead by way of photographs, knowing that one day she’ll be reduced to a few memories and a photo on her sewing table. A botched abortion here, an affair there, a child who, though only 7, “already possessed a great deal of formless anxiety,” a father considered nice only because he does not beat his children—these are the people and events that populate Ditlevsen’s unhappy world. About the only promise of redemption comes in the title story, in which a young woman who inhabits a dank corner of a tiny apartment with her parents, her father “completely superfluous in my mother’s world,” works herself through sheer will into a career as a writer. If this small, gloomy piece is a roman à clef, then Ditlevsen deserves every bit of the reader’s sympathy.
Neurasthenic and melancholic but a central work of modern Danish literature.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3746-0560-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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