Another artful family dissection performed by Huisman.
Stories of the “great men,” told by a woman in their family.
Huisman—whose last novel, The Book of Mother (2021), chronicled the turbulent life of her mercurial mother—returns to autofiction, here reanimating the lives of her paternal relatives through a deep dive into archives, memories, and imagination. Returning to France in 2020 after two decades abroad, Huisman encounters a diminished version of her father, now elderly and near death, rather than the invincible “academic-businessman” who left a trail of wives, ex-wives, mistresses, and eight children (born to four different women) in his wake. Tracing the details of the bourgeois, privileged upbringing her father enjoyed, Huisman also sifts through the ephemera and records of her grandfather Georges Huisman’s experiences, describing years when he was both politically important and, then, nearly ruined during World War II. Huisman, whose own mother referred to her husband as “a little Jewish around the edges,” reports the toll her Jewish ancestry cost her father and grandfather in a stoic recitation of the antisemitism boiling over in Vichy France. Armed with information supplied by an academic who studied her grandfather’s life (and whose real identity appears in the acknowledgements), Huisman delves, creatively, into an area of Georges’ life clouded by time: a long-term relationship with Choute, his mistress. According to family legend, Huisman’s father, 11 years old at the time, refused to leave wartime France with Choute and Georges when offered the opportunity to escape to the U.S. or Britain—sans the rest of the family. (Whether the story is apocryphal is alluded to by Huisman in her reference to a “composite of fact and fiction.”) While Choute has vanished into history, her influence provides material for a thoughtful raconteur like Huisman to illuminate historical experience through imagination.
Another artful family dissection performed by Huisman.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780593833766
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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