Brilliantly observant poetry that captures a dark moment in our recent history.
A New Yorker watches from his apartment window as a plague ravages the city in this prose poem by Pelzman.
Gabriel is a lonely, troubled, and divorced industrial designer who lives in an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Each day he observes his neighbors go about their lives in adjacent apartment blocks. Despite never having met them, he grows to know the actions of a select few intimately, including an aging Mancunian couple, a pair of gay doctors, a lonely old man, and a widowed socialite. The girl he nicknames Sophie particularly captivates Gabriel. He watches her go about her daily chores and grows jealous when any potential suitors visit. Gabriel observes sadly that “despite being separated by only a few inches of concrete, / they will never be of service to each other.” His neighbors suddenly begin to fall ill as a pandemic moves through the city. “Death is here,” declares the speaker, and the city’s forces are “depleted” for a moment. As Manhattan begins to recover, neighbors begin to “see” one another for the first time. What will this mean for Gabriel and Sophie? The author’s poetic narrative captures the rapid manner in which the city generates an ever changing spectacle for the distanced observer. The everyday street life is captured in short, urgently descriptive lines that comment on the action as it unfolds: “There is a cyclist, / a pot-bellied man, / who spits on the ground / and clears his nostrils.” Such descriptions are often interspersed with Gabriel’s reactions “(Gabriel believes that the social contract continues to erode”), framing each scene with personal opinion. The result is an intimate portrait of a metropolis that becomes distressingly distorted and paranoic with the onset of the “plague” (“An ambulance, / a deathmobile with pretty lights, / ambles up Amsterdam. / He glares at the ambulance / Stay away, / he warns”). Pelzman meticulously captures the shifting moods of the city during the pandemic and knits a captivatingly unconventional love story into the narrative. If future generations wish to understand what the Covid-19 lockdown felt like in America’s great cities, this book should be among the first on their reading list.
Brilliantly observant poetry that captures a dark moment in our recent history.Pub Date: June 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781733258562
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Jackson Heights Press
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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