A joyous investment in the power of language to reveal and then transform.
A grandmother’s descent into dementia causes her genderfluid grandchild to embark on an exploration of the family tree in this prize-winning debut novel from a Swiss author.
In the Bernese German dialect, "grossmeer," or grandmother, translates literally to "large ocean," and the sense the narrator has of their own beloved but often troubling Grossmeer reflects this vast, enveloping unknowability. As Grossmeer’s condition declines, the narrator sets out to compile the stories that form the complex throughline from their cloistered childhood in the provincial Swiss city of Ostermundigen, growing up in the house their great-grandfather built with his own hands, to their current life in Zürich as a genderfluid person with an abundant sex life. But, just as they see language as "an ocean, waving and mixing, ebbing and gushing, with no clear border,” the boundaries of memory prove equally fluid. The narrator travels backward through Grossmeer’s dark fairy tales of the Ostermundigen house and garden with its towering blood beech, planted on the day of Grossmeer’s birth, and then even further back through the biographical research their witch-obsessed mother has done into the family’s forgotten matrilineage of midwives, herbalists, and prostitutes. The resulting text is nothing so simple as a record of Grossmeer’s life, or even an answer to the questions that dog her descendants’ understanding of her secretive childhood, haunted by a harsh mother, dead or disappearing sisters, and the limitations placed upon her by both poverty and her gender. Rather, the narrator interrogates the “binary-fascism” of language (spoken, written, in the gestures of the body) in order to reflect the “urgent in-betweenness” forced upon them by their fluid reality in a rigidly binary world. As the narrator says, “Perhaps writing is the search for a foreign language in the words we have available to us.” This book, which flits stylistically among heady fairy-tale iconography, a meticulously researched cultural history, and a sendup of high postmodern maximalism, among other modes, reinvents the narrative of the family drama not as a vehicle for the narrator’s identity, but as a lucent mirror held up to the possibilities of our own.
A joyous investment in the power of language to reveal and then transform.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780374612375
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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.
