A book stuffed with revelations while keeping many secrets.
The Polynesian islands in the South Pacific are transformed by this historical epic into a region at once otherworldly and recognizable.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son, 2012) has established a reputation for spinning complex, colorful, and plausibly rococo yarns from civilizations remote from and mysterious to outsiders. Here, his audacious, unruly imagination roams with confidence through the island kingdom of Tonga as it undergoes societal uncertainty and the potential of war with other islands. At or near the center of this whirlwind is Kōrero, bold and insatiably curious daughter of a fisherman and a tattoo artist, whose discovery of a fishhook-shaped pendant in an ancestral graveyard signals the beginning of a grand, perilous, and transfiguring adventure that puts her, her family, and her friends on a sea voyage whose outcome could mean either salvation or oblivion for their people. The perilous odyssey is led by a figure known only as the Wayfinder, whose near-intuitive grasp of navigation by both the shifting waters and the celestial patterns of the night sky arouses in Kōrero her own aspirations of being a “way finder.” Telling stories, however, is her own means of navigating through the twists and turns of her life’s journey, and Johnson’s multilayered narrative has the baggy, wildly divergent feel of oral storytelling, in which the intrigues of royal power politics, often facilitated through violence, are woven with tales of familial conflict, verse by royal poets, and even the occasional monologue from Kōkī, the most articulate and, it seems, resilient of the islands’ many parrots. Such enchanted touches are deftly threaded into the rangy storyline by Johnson’s richly lyrical prose, which is also capable of handling the social dynamics of the Tongans along with the background stories of royalty and their rivals. At times, the saga can get so discursive that it risks leaving the reader on some reef or capsized by an unexpected surge from another time. Yet somehow, you yield to the novelist’s evocation of a world that, like the pendant recovered at the novel’s start, feels “both ancient and startlingly new.”
A book stuffed with revelations while keeping many secrets.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780374619572
Page Count: 768
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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.
