An intriguing debut—not a story of war, but of a nightmarish visit to its echo chamber.
A young woman struggling to find her way in South Korea wrestles with the generational grief of a country torn asunder.
This ethereal debut novel, at once a horror story and a bird’s bone–delicate exploration of trauma, is filled with ghosts. Like many of the menaces imagined here, the story never fully materializes, but that doesn’t prevent the atmosphere from being chilling. Our narrator is Yewon, a young South Korean woman. She has some school under her belt and dreams of going to college in Australia or living in a real city like Seoul instead of the small town where she’s just finished her last day at a dead-end job and lives with her disparaging mother. Yewon’s running monologue is straight-laced, but Ham somehow conjures up a delicious tension among her lead’s longing to become something, the little tragedies unfolding around her, and the spooky aftereffects of the Korean War. There’s Yewon’s sister, who is pregnant and getting a divorce from her husband. Broadening her horizons are her best friend, Min, and Tae-kwun, a young engineering student she dates. There’s not much time for fun, though. There’s the old North Korean woman Yewon agrees to drive to a prison to visit her brother, which reminds Yewon that her own brother, Jae-hyun, is stationed at a military base close to the DMZ. There’s her father, dead from a factory explosion in Saudi Arabia. Most of all, there’s her mother ritually washing the bones of their ancestors in the bathtub where Yewon was born. All of these simmering tensions lead to Yewon’s increasingly frightening visions of the titular hotel: “I was a guest. Traveling far from home, come to a foreign place. A stranger to where I arrived. Though I don’t remember coming to a hotel or traveling at all. I don’t want a room. I need to get out.”
An intriguing debut—not a story of war, but of a nightmarish visit to its echo chamber.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781638931379
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Zando
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
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