Vintage Berry, elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost.
Kentucky farmer and writer Berry continues his cycle of Port William stories.
Marcellus Catlett, 43 years old, is a tobacco farmer, noble and stoic, out in the fields before dawn. It’s 1906, and he’s hauled in a fine crop, “prizing at last the cured and graded, appraised and cherished leaves into hogsheads that he sent by the railroad to the auction warehouse in Louisville.” Alas for Marce, James B. Duke’s American Tobacco Co. has cornered the market and is paying less than it costs to grow the stuff. “Its purchase, properly named, was theft,” writes Berry. It’s up to Marce’s young son, Wheeler, grown to manhood, to enlist the aid of the government to organize a farmers cooperative to wrest a fair price for their crop. Berry, as always, writes in simple but elegant language, celebrating rural lifeways: “Wheeler grew into the love of farming. He loved the days he worked to the end of, and from there looked back at the difference he had made.” Wheeler, like Marce, is also a born leader, brilliant and diligent, qualities that pass along to his descendants all the way up to the present day, when, Berry allows, tobacco isn’t much farmed anymore, given its carcinogenic qualities. Berry’s novel is very much of a piece with his celebrated essays on culture and agriculture, almost to the point of didacticism; what saves the book from becoming an extended sermon (“The industrial replacement of neighborhood by competition and technology moves everything worthy of love out of reach”) is Berry’s ability to construct a good story that circles through time, beginning and ending in the faraway past and showing plainly the habits of mind and work that have been undone by corporate rule, divorce from nature, and simple greed, “a mortal disease.”
Vintage Berry, elegiac and elegant, with a profound sense of all that has been lost.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781640097759
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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