Evensong: Telegraph review and best of 2025 lists

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Check out The Telegraph’s review of Evensong:

When does the slide into old age begin? With a number? Or does it begin to manifest at the point at which a person starts to become invisible? These are the questions posed by Evensong, the latest book from American novelist Stewart O’Nan, and his fourth to include the character of octogenarian widow Emily Maxwell. In this novel, she’s a member of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a group of women of a certain age who band together to help one another and their local ageing community with everyday chores – grocery shopping; collecting prescriptions – in their native Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Plus Evensong appears on two best of 2025 lists:

“Evensong” by Stewart O’Nan (Atlantic Monthly Press, $28) is a layered novel of women’s friendships as they age together and support one another. The characters are warm and funny, there are a few times when your heart will sit in your throat, and you won’t be sorry you read it. It’s just plain irresistible.

‘Even­song’

By Stew­art O’Nan

I’m only just now real­iz­ing how many of my favor­ite nov­els this year are about fam­il­ies grap­pling with rap­idly chan­ging cir­cum­stances in their lives and in the world. In this one, Emily Max­well (from pre­vi­ous O’Nan nov­els, includ­ing “Emily, Alone”) is a mem­ber of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a com­munity of women who take care of one another in the retire­ment com­munity where most of them live. O’Nan’s book closely observes the every­day joys and sor­rows of their life, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the ways in which the women have cre­ated a new kind of fam­ily.

Financial Times: Evensong by Stewart O’Nan — a bittersweet portrait of ageing in America

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The author beautifully evokes the everyday pleasures and niggling troubles of four friends in their later years

Old age is one long painful process of “incremental weakening”, writes the American novelist Stewart O’Nan in Evensong, his moving story of four elderly Pittsburgh ladies who find solace in assisting others. Emily, Arlene, Kitzi and Susie are core members of the Humpty Dumpty Club, an informal group of women who help friends and neighbours with the practicalities, indignities and relentless admin bound up with one’s final years: collecting prescriptions, ordering groceries, offering lifts to hospital appointments and, eventually, making the inevitable funeral arrangements.

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