With a penchant for the philosophical epic, del Árbol gets lost here in all the melodramatic detail.
A Spanish crime novel attempts to connect the dots across decades, countries, and continents as two nursing-home residents embark on a late-life search for meaning.
Miguel is a widower and retired bank director in his 70s who is losing his memory to Alzheimer’s. The slightly younger Helena has plenty of spirit and all her wits but has ended up in the same Spanish nursing home, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Following the suicide of another free-spirited resident, she realizes that time is short and life is fleeting. The pilgrimage she makes with Miguel defies credulity but ends with him in Sweden, alone. It is there that he notices a woman previously unknown to him and ponders how “people were mysteriously connected without ever realizing it.” It seems that it is Helena who has connected them, however tenuously. More than a half-century and hundreds of pages earlier, the novel’s prologue found Helena’s mother committing suicide by drowning, and threatening to kill her daughter along with her, all because of a complication it takes the rest of the novel to unravel. Miguel also had a troubled childhood, and both have had troubled marriages and relations with their children. Skipping back and forth across countries and decades, the novel explores their separate family bloodlines, from war and politics through love that is as passionate as it is taboo. Even as Miguel loses Helena (along with his memory), their mutual sense of mission never flags. No one could criticize del Árbol for lack of ambition, though this novel finds his characters a little too much at the mercy of chance and fate, as the reader struggles to find reasons to care.
With a penchant for the philosophical epic, del Árbol gets lost here in all the melodramatic detail.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63542-995-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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