There Was an Old Woman

Narrator Nan McNamara's homespun approach is perfect for this light domestic noir. She deftly channels Mina, the spunky 91-year-old heroine whose curiosity and verve fuel the mystery. Fiercely independent, Mina is trying to stay out of the clutches of various scoundrels, most notably her avaricious nephew, Brian. Her only ally is Evie, the much younger daughter of her dying alcoholic neighbor. Despite their differences in age, the two women bond, and McNamara succeeds in delivering convincing portrayals of both of them. She doesn't do quite as well with the men in the book, who are almost all skunks and tend to sound the same. Still, her playful delivery hits the mark with the author's clever wordplay and sly humor. A.B.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

January 14, 2013
In this touching novel of suspense from Ephron (Come and Find Me), Evie Ferrante returns home to Brooklyn to care for her estranged alcoholic mother, Sandra. As Evie tries to make the house habitable—it resembles a disaster site more than her childhood home—she finds several suspicious uncashed checks. The only person who appears to know anything is Sandra’s elderly neighbor, Mina Yetner, who’s not entirely on the ball herself. Mina’s house also has marks of another sort of decay: she’s nearly set her house on fire, misplaced her purse in the fridge, and lost important documents. Evie becomes convinced that Mina’s forgetfulness is not simply due to her age, and Mina’s nephew, who insists that Mina move into a nursing home, may be hiding something. The narrative never strays far from home, but Ephron’s double portrait of the intimate details of the inescapable consequences of age and alcoholism is as gripping as any traditional mystery. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents.

February 1, 2013

Nonagenarian Mina Yetner keeps a list of everyone she has ever known who has died. The list includes the husband she lost 30 years ago and her recently departed sister. She's now filled four pages of a notebook with names, and when she sees her neighbor being taken away in an ambulance it seems the list will grow again. At the same time, Evie Ferrante, a historian working on an exhibit that includes artifacts from dramatic events in New York's history, learns her alcoholic mother is in the hospital again--and this time it's serious. Mina and Evie form an unlikely bond as Evie tries to come to grips with what her mother's life has become and Mina fends off a nephew who thinks she's too old to care for herself. The two women share more than a neighborhood, but also a past one wants to preserve and the other hopes to forget. VERDICT Ephron's (Come and Find Me) domestic noir will appeal to those who enjoy mysteries without bloody and violent themes, but readers looking for fast-paced action in their psychological suspense will have to turn elsewhere. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/12.]--Vicki Briner, City Coll. Lib., Fort Lauderdale, FL

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2013
Ominous things are happening to elderly women living by themselves in the salt marsh of Higgs Point, across the East River from Manhattan. Home to look after her suddenly hospitalized mother, Evie Ferrante is shocked to discover the bungalow Evie and her sister Ginger grew up in has become a trash heap overnight--mysterious new flat-screen TV and wads of loose cash notwithstanding. Mina Yetner, their 90-year-old next-door neighbor, whose mind seems sharp to Evie, is being treated as senile and worse by her manipulative nephew, who has been pressuring her to sign certain papers. The more oddities Evie discovers, including a car leaking gasoline because it's had acid poured in the tank, the less she trusts even people like Finn, a cute geek who had a crush on her in high school and now reserves donuts for her as proprietor of the still-running dime store. Evie has much invested in nostalgia. A fireman's daughter who witnessed a tragic blaze at a young age, she is curating a show for a historical society about the day in 1945 a lost B-25 bomber slammed into the Empire State Building--a crash, as it happens, Mina survived. Told from both Evie's and Mina's perspectives, the book takes its time setting the scene and establishing the creepy vibe. Ultimately, it doesn't have a strong enough payoff as a suspense novel. But in portraying the inner life of an aged widow struggling heroically against her limitations, it's very good. Ephron, who wrote five novels with Donald Davidoff as G.H. Ephron, continues to assert her own thoughtful style with her third fictional effort under her own name.

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