Martin parses personal and social politics with methodical care and a reserved tone reminiscent of Edith Wharton.
Yes, the narrator of Martin’s new novel is a middle-aged American woman vacationing in Tuscany, but this prickly, uncomfortably relevant dive into personal and societal ethics is no escapist romance.
Creative writing professor Jan Vidor stays at Villa Chiara as a paying guest for the first time during the summer of 1983. The villa’s owner is Beatrice, herself a professor at an unnamed American college. Beatrice’s last name, Doyle, comes from her failed marriage to a Cape Cod oysterman’s son she met while attending graduate school at Boston College, but she was born into a family of aristocrats who split their time between Florence and their country estate, Villa Chiara. During more visits together over the next 20 years, Beatrice shares tales with Jan, connecting family history to 20th-century Italian history, particularly the Fascist era. Jan sees the family’s central tragedy as the death of Uncle Sandro, a gentle romantic who spent much of his adult life in an insane asylum but died violently under murky circumstances outside the villa in 1943. Believing Beatrice has given her permission to use the family stories, Jan writes them into a book; chapters become a novel within the novel here. Jan’s narrative pits innocence (spiritual, idealistic Sandro) against evil (his Fascist, capitalistic, misogynistic brother Marco). Yet the changes she witnesses at the villa and in Beatrice over time reveal harsh realities about class and capitalism in Italy (and America). Beatrice, the novel’s true central enigma, originally went to America to reinvent herself through education. She married but never took her working-class ex-husband seriously and continues to have problematic relationships with her mother and her son, who paradoxically has chosen to live in Germany. Yet after spending most of her life in America, Beatrice remains an outsider there while her identity as Italian landed gentry seems to crystallize as the working-class locals her family has patronized for generations take financial control.
Martin parses personal and social politics with methodical care and a reserved tone reminiscent of Edith Wharton.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54639-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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