More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some...
Wife Discovers Husband's Infidelity, Must Decide What To Do: that's the routine sliver of plot here.
Wife Discovers Husband's Infidelity, Must Decide What To Do: that's the routine sliver of plot here. But essentially this slender first novel is just a framework for an Ephronesque series of stand-up-comic routines, journalistic one-liners, and movie-farce-style vignettes--an occasionally funny but edgily unsatisfying tsimmes. The wisecracking narrator is cookbook-writer/TV-celebrity Rachel Samstat, who one day realizes that her Washington-columnist husband Mark Feldman, the ultimate "Jewish prince," is having an affair with Thelma Rice, giant wife of a blitheringly neurotic Undersecretary of State. Mark confesses--but doesn't offer to give Thelma up. Spurred on by celebrity-shrink Vera ("every so often she has to fly off to co-host Merv Griffin"), pregnant Rachel storms off to her beloved N.Y.C. with tot Sam while reviewing her marriages (#1 was "a low-grade lunatic who kept hamsters"). She rejoins her therapy group--which gets robbed. She flies back to D.C. when Mark seems interested in a reconciliation. But finally, after giving birth, Rachel tells Mark off, throws a pie in his face, and instantly winds up in the arms of an adorable New Yorker for an upbeat fadeout. Throughout, Ephron fails to find the right balance between satire and soap--reaching for laughs (and canceling out empathy) with outlandish cartoon shriek, then lurching for the heart-strings with Rachel's crying-behind-the-jokes sentimentality. ("Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much,") Only one moment lifts off into inspired, manic-but-believable comedy: Rachel, in a desperate/vengeful panic, spreads the rumor that Thelma has gotten a gynecological infection. (In a Vietnamese restaurant: "The toilet seat, I guess. . . although I'm not sure. Maybe from the spring rolls.") And the rest consists of Rachel's uneven musings on being Jewish, being in Washington, being Jewish in Washington, the Sixties, Phil Donahue, Lillian Hellman, the Eastern Airlines shuttle, cellulite, sex, shrinks, marriage, and cooking. Plus: lots of not-quite-funny aphorisms ("Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in winter and I'll show you a real asshole"); tired send-ups of Women's Lib; and many, many recipes. (My Search for Warren Harding, p. 206, also was big on recipes: is this the new trend in cute-fiction substitutes for content?) More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some of Gall Parent's too.
More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some of Gall Parent's too.Pub Date: May 4, 1983
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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