Handsome - Ezra Palmer - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Ezra Palmer

NARRATOR: Marilyn Downey

GENRE: Literary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: July 13, 2026

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary fiction novel that grew on me with every subsequent chapter. Interesting character and story development. Great depiction of Alzheimer’s. Stream of consciousness in approach, but used very well. Definitely recommended.

Plot Preview:

Evvie Hurtz remembers everything, especially when it comes to her husband Jack who has had multiple affairs and lied throughout their marriage. She wants him to move out.

Evvie Hurtz has Alzheimers’. But she doesn’t remember this.

The story comes to us in Evvie’s first-person perspective.

As soon as you learn that a character has Alzheimer’s, you can expect certain traits in their behaviour, one of which is that their memory cannot be trusted. But when you don’t know that a character has Alzheimer’s and they claim that they remember everything, you will believe them. This is the inherent and fascinating contradiction in this novel. I had forgotten the blurb by the time I got to the book, so I didn’t remember the Alzheimer’s factor at all. When this novel began with Evvie as the narrator, I felt all emotions with her, including fury at her husband and frustration at her son. But after a point, I wondered why Evvie was repeating so many of her recollections and observations and also why she was jumping from topic to topic tangentially even as she sounded so coherent. Only after I connected the dots did I begin to appreciate the novel more and forgave the slow-ish start.

The writing captures the impact of Alzheimers’ excellently, which is even more admirable considering how the story comes from the patient’s perspective. We have no ‘outside view’ of the disease. Yet from Evvie’s endless chatter, we can see how Azheimers’ wrecks a person’s memory without destroying it entirely. There are so many moments where we wonder how Evvie remembers a particular emotion connected to an incident while having forgotten another. Brilliant writing, this.

Evvie is the clear star of the story. She took me on a roller-coaster ride of sentiments from start to end. I am not a big fan of stream-of-consciousness writing, but in this novel, it is used cleverly and with justification so I actually enjoyed the ride. Jack is also an intriguing character, though it is tough to decide how to feel about him given how unreliable Evvie’s narration is.

There is no plot as such, even though we learn almost everything about Evvie’s life. The whole book is one extended first-person monologue peppered with “I remember everything”, with very few conversations or action scenes to break the monotony. This won't work in most cases, but given the premise of the novel, the writing structure makes a lot of sense. The ending is just perfect.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 6 hours, is narrated by Marilyn Downey. Her narration was too soft even at 100% volume, which is the only complaint I have in an otherwise flawless performance. I loved her expressive voice that conveyed so many emotions without going over the top. I’d definitely recommend the audiobook to avid listeners. Newbie listeners might get a bit flummoxed by the extended monologue and the sudden swaps between Evvie’s ponderings and her actual reality.

Overall, this book took me by surprise. The slow start and slight repetition of content made total sense once the reasons for it became clear. Anyone who enjoys a character-focussed, contemplative read would find the book an intriguing reading choice. To readers who don’t enjoy rambling chapters or repetition of content or stream of consciousness, I’ll just say: keep your patience with the book because everything makes sense after a point.

Definitely recommended to lit fic readers.

My thanks to the author Ezra Palmer and IBPA for providing the ALC of “Handsome” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.