A well-chosen, confidently translated gathering of stories that casts new light on its author.
A fresh, revealing translation of some of the German writer’s now-canonical stories.
In this vigorous new version, Searls emphasizes aspects of Mann's life and work that have not been well aired outside of the scholarly literature. One is Mann’s mixed-race background, including Indigenous and African ancestry through his Brazilian mother, little known to general readers but certainly known to the Nazis who drove him out of Germany. Among other things, Searls holds, this background lent a personal touch to Mann’s insistence that German culture was connected as much to the Mediterranean as to the North Sea. Mann was also unafraid to explore sexuality—and homosexuality—in his works, which drew the wrath of the censors. Finally, Searls argues that Mann is often funny, a fact obscured by rather musty earlier translations, with his humor “far more than the supercilious ‘irony’ he is generally credited with.” Searls takes pains to bring Mann’s decades-old prose to life without anachronism or false breeziness, and where the language is sometimes not quite idiomatic, as when Felix Krull stands alongside his dead father in “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull,” it is to point out the German love of abstraction and distance: “I stood at the husk of my progenitor as it grew colder, holding my hand over my eyes, and paid him the copious tribute of my tears.” Krull’s father isn’t quite the scamp his son is, but Krull’s indeed humorous story has Papa selling rotgut champagne, arguing, “I give the people what they believe in.” One character longs to be “a dancer or a cabaret reciter,” tossing out bourgeois convention, while another, decidedly not “a woman of good morals,” is revealed to be canoodling with a young musician. Then, of course, there’s “Death in Venice,” arguably Mann’s most perfectly realized story, with its intimations of mortality on every page, as when its professorial protagonist steps into a gondola “so singularly black, black as otherwise only coffins are.”
A well-chosen, confidently translated gathering of stories that casts new light on its author.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-631-49848-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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