Sassy, sharp, and very funny, but with a consequential heart.
An artist blurs the line between reality and performance as she livestreams her stalker’s abuses on the eve of an important gallery show.
Sabine is a successful conceptual artist about to debut her newest work, “fifteen photographic portraits of her…covered from head to toe in sheer costumes. These wearable puppets, several feet long…featured silicone faces that Sabine could position over her own.” Titled things like “Crone,” “Baby,” “Stay at Home Mother,” and “Baba Yaga,” the portraits purport to explore the archetypes of female identity as experienced by the individual, and singular, female artist. Or, as Sabine explains it to a collector and the gallery owner, Cecily, “It’s about pretending to be something you already are.” The problem is the show could also be about falsity, or juxtaposition, or “the face and the body and the night,” or any number of other things depending on the viewer. This difficulty with definition, and Sabine’s oscillation between her sense of utter failure and artistic victory, tears at her as she flounders through the pre-opening publicity push wherein her main strategy is to livestream both the bizarre and banal of her everyday in an attempt to “coauthor a work with the public…to start a dialogue with the viewer…in real time.” Throughout it all, Sabine’s beleaguered husband, Constantine; her friend Ruth, whose whale-shaped cakes “occup[y] the intersection between baking and marine life”; and Cecily’s partner, Freya, whose sculptures sell for thousands, attempt to soothe and bolster her ego, with little success. As Sabine’s anxiety ramps up, she's visited by the apparition of feminist art icon Carolee Schneeman, offering protection against the insistent attentions of a stalker who peers in Sabine’s windows with the muddied face of a Rembrandt self-portrait. The whirligig pace of the novel relentlessly intensifies from chapter to chapter as Sabine navigates the boundary between real and manufactured, all in front of a live audience. If Sabine mistakes art for life, or vice versa, the results could be deadly—both for her body of work and her actual body. The book is a pointedly absurdist send-up of the pretensions of the art world, which nevertheless carries at its core a real exploration of what is at stake when one lives for art. Baxter continues her triumphant exploration of real lives lived on the fringes of the surreal.
Sassy, sharp, and very funny, but with a consequential heart.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781646222551
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
