Evensong

O’Nan (Last Night at the Lobster) once again finds extraordinary resonance in the lives of ordinary people. In Pittsburgh, 89-year-old Joan Hargrove, leader of the Humpty Dumpty Club, a group of elderly women who help each other out, lives the “nightmare” they all share when she falls down a flight of stairs and breaks her leg. With Joan recovering in the hospital, it’s left to other club members to fill the void: Kitzi delivers prescriptions to Gene and Jean Sokolov, brother-and-sister hoarders who live with a houseful of cats, and slowly becomes enmeshed in the siblings’ lives; Susie, a divorcee, takes care of Joan’s cat and finds romance with a retired postal worker who plays in a bluegrass band. Meanwhile, Emily, a recurring character in O’Nan’s fiction, is having trouble with her sister-in-law, who is showing the first signs of dementia. The drama here is strictly low-key (a funeral is the emotional high point), but O’Nan proves that he has no peers when it comes to evoking the quotidian challenges and routines of daily life. It’s a bittersweet celebration of the twilight years. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Co. (Nov.)