An admirable collection of stories, saturated with acerbic wit and startling empathy.
In Carson’s fifth collection of short stories, Northern Ireland is a place that protects and punishes in equal turn.
The unnamed protagonist of the title story has finally convinced his Spanish girlfriend, with whom he has a tense, confusing relationship, to visit his native Belfast. She has no interest in meeting his family or seeing the places he frequented growing up or even appeasing him. Carson has set this story in an alternate present in which animals seen as obsolete are culled or sent away; what Paola wants to see is the last horse in Britain. The narrator’s daydreams of how lovely it will be to share his hometown with his partner are quickly squashed after they arrive, but he still at one point feels “the gut-twist relief of belonging somewhere specific.” This feeling—at once soothing and nauseating—is present in each of these 16 stories as their characters confront upsetting or deeply frightening obstacles, some absurd, some starkly mundane. In “Grand So,” a couple struggles to keep their jam business afloat. Granda buys a used car for Granny and their granddaughter Ruth to drive around the province, handing out samples, even though “nobody wants to buy luxury jam. This is Northern Ireland. In the eighties. People have other things on their minds.” Ruth discovers that the ghost of the car’s previous owner—a large chain-smoking man she dubs the Backseat Man—is haunting it. Worse, her family is Protestant, and this man is clearly “the other sort of ghost.” “Caravan,” another standout, is told from the point of view of a young girl. Caroline is 10, “almost a grown-up,” and tired of kiddie stuff. Her father promises that if she can fix up the old caravan she and her sister play house in every summer, she can have it as her very own grown-up room. This story’s strengths are in its subtleties, especially its framing of the ways in which the vibrancy of girlhood can lurch, all of a sudden, into the bleak logic of adulthood.
An admirable collection of stories, saturated with acerbic wit and startling empathy.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668056615
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
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
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