With muted power, this book plumbs the role privilege plays in fate.
A mother’s frantic postwar search for her daughter is the highlight of Landau’s latest.
Landau’s second novel—like her first, The Empire of the Senses (2015)—portrays haut bourgeois European Jews who find their carefully crafted assimilation no defense against barbarism. Having fled the Russian Revolution for Paris, Vera Volosenkovahas achieved success as a novelist. In June 1940, she and husband Max, an opera composer, are ensconced at their villa in the south of France, surrounded by prominent artists and intellectuals, all in denial about the coming German occupation. Landau effectively depicts the psychological disconnect between Vera’s expectations—that civilization could not fail her twice in less than three decades—and the sudden reality of being ordered to “report for internment.” Vera and Max are among the privileged few who manage to escape over the Pyrenees and sail to the United States. Out of necessity, Vera leaves their 4-year-old daughter, Lucie, in France in the care of trusted governess Agnes. Having relocated with many stellar contemporaries to Hollywood, Max finds a comfortable niche as a film composer. Wrongly or not—Max’s inner turmoil is withheld from us in a way that seems manipulative—Vera resents his seeming indifference, particularly after news breaks of a massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane, Lucie’s last known refuge. An alternating thread involves Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring director Sasha, whose origins lie in the shtetls and the Lower East Side. Plotlines converge, like America’s entry into the war, at first too slowly and then breathlessly as Vera returns to chaotic, post-Liberation France on a desperate quest to find Lucie among thousands of missing children. Hollywood’s prewar reluctance to offend Hitler is scantly touched on, and the United States’ embargo on refugees not at all. As the novel progresses, the main conflict is between Vera’s remorse about leaving Lucie and the protective bubble she inhabits.
With muted power, this book plumbs the role privilege plays in fate.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-19053-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.
This is wizard Harry Dresden’s yearlong mourning period for Karrin Murphy, the woman he loved.
If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters, dark magic, and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences, train a new apprentice, and juggle a relationship with Thomas’ half sister Lara, the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark, depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it, this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion, an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough, redemptive pause that could be a real drag, but thankfully, it’s not, because Butcher shows balance, too: Even as the crises pile up, so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593199336
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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