A glimpse into a friendship that doesn’t hesitate to touch on joy, sadness, love, and death.
Two women, one in Los Angeles and the other on an island near Seattle, strike up a correspondence that blossoms into a deep friendship in the early 1960s.
When Miss Joan Bergstrom, then 27, sends a packet of saffron she has picked up on her travels to Mrs. Imogen Fortier, the author of a column she enjoys in Northwest Home & Life magazine, a correspondence between the two women begins. Imogen leaps into the friendship with both feet despite their 32-year age difference, as does Joan. What starts out as the occasional chat about food evolves into much more as the women expand their horizons—Joan with a new job as a reporter on the women's pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and an exploration of the wide variety of foods available in Los Angeles, and Imogen with new tastes and recipes that bring Francis, her husband of four decades, out of the shell he's lived in since the Great War. Author Fay has written an all-too-brief novel that explores how the women’s friendship evolves and deepens when they open up to each other. In their letters, Joan and Imogen show their true selves, exploring their experiences and their thoughts about love, mental health, sadness, difficult decisions, and unexpected joys. Fay’s touch is deft, and the information is received by both women with love and acceptance without becoming cloying to the reader. Written primarily in the form of letters sent between 1962 and 1965, the story also explores how adventures in the culinary world redefine the women's relationships with happiness, food, and new experiences. The story leaves the reader wanting more—more recipes, more letters, more time in the gentle, unfolding friendship of these two women.
A glimpse into a friendship that doesn’t hesitate to touch on joy, sadness, love, and death.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-41933-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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
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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