Passaro’s widescreen storytelling strives to cover everything, almost to a fault.
A tale of two New Yorkers across five decades of love, money, sex, and death.
Passaro’s second novel, following Violence, Nudity, Adult Content (2001), centers on the shifting fortunes of George and Anna, who meet as college students in 1976. Their romance is short-lived, but though they pursue different relationships and career paths over the years, they never quite fall out of each other’s orbit. After false starts as a journalist and carnival-ride operator, George stumbles into a job running a coffee shop and becomes the co-owner of a Starbucks-style mega-chain. Anna, meanwhile, heads to law school and spends years dissatisfied with work and men—until George reemerges, divorced, as if fated. (“They would not, this time, just glance off each other like two molecules in a heated system. They would stick.”) As he tracks that time, Passaro crafts a novel that’s very Manhattan in its particulars, with fine-grained descriptions of the World Trade Center and people lining up to buy the Village Voice to get a jump on apartment listings. But he’s also big-theme hunting, exploring the ways money shapes character, how sex binds or wrecks relationships, and how we endure and survive grief. (The mention of the twin towers on Page 1 all but sounds an airhorn to let us know that theme is surely coming.) Passaro writes exquisitely at every turn, narrating with an engaging worldly-wise tone. But the novel is also curiously centerless; its leads march through sexual abuse, breakups, bad jobs, and even 9/11 so implacably that the novel feels less about human beings than victims (or beneficiaries) of fickle fate. The novel’s epic sweep is ambitious, but the emotional intensity of the characters gets somewhat smothered amid it.
Passaro’s widescreen storytelling strives to cover everything, almost to a fault.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7432-4510-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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