Thai has created three strong, unique women determined to find their own paths despite daunting circumstances.
Long-held secrets haunt the lives of three generations of Vietnamese women.
Ann Tran, an illustrator who lives in Michigan with her boyfriend, Noah Winthorpe, a college professor from a wealthy White family of country clubbers, gradually becomes aware of the disconnect between the life she thought she wanted with Noah and the life she actually would have chosen on her own. The realization is prompted by an unplanned pregnancy, but Ann takes time to think things over once she returns “home” to the Gulf Coast of Florida to mourn the death of her beloved and revered grandmother Minh, who had fled Vietnam as a single mother with her children during the “American War.” Ann and her mother, Hương, who have long been at odds, must grapple with creating a relationship in the absence of Minh’s overwhelming influence. Hương raised Ann as a single mother—though Ann was closer to her grandmother—and never told her the identity of her father. In the shadow of Minh’s death, the two women move into the sprawling but deteriorated Gothic mansion—the Banyan House—they have jointly inherited and work to overcome the legacy of lies and misunderstandings that has permeated their family for generations. As Ann seeks to form a plan for her future, she becomes aware of complicated truths about her grandmother’s life through explorations of the jam-packed rooms of the Banyan House and candid revelations from her high school friends about the woman she thought she knew so well. Thai deftly dissects the touchiness of strained mother-daughter relationships in a surprise-filled narrative that ranges from 1960s Vietnam to present-day Florida.
Thai has created three strong, unique women determined to find their own paths despite daunting circumstances.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780063267107
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
SEEN & HEARD
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