A sensitive portrait of troubled lives.
A family’s trauma laid bare.
As with her memoir, Wild Game (2019), Brodeur sets her new novel on Cape Cod, whose terrain she knows intimately, within a family, like her own, harboring secrets and lies. It's the summer of 2016, a contentious election looms, and marine biologist Adam Gardner is deeply unsettled by his impending birthday. Soon to turn 70, he feels on the cusp of a great discovery about humpback whales—a discovery, he believes, that will finally earn him the accolades he deserves. Suffering from bipolar disorder that he has managed to keep in check with medication, he decides to free himself from “the mind-numbing effect” of those meds in order “to succumb knowingly to the allure of mania.” The immediate effect is energizing: He professes “a remarkable facility with a broad and unexpected range of topics: Shaker furniture, Tibetan culture, black holes, Homer, string theory, you name it,” and, most notably, the language of whales. Adam’s 70th birthday party is the central event of the novel, an occasion when his son, Ken, an arrogant real estate developer with political ambitions, and his daughter, Abby, an artist just becoming recognized, will present him with gifts they hope will elicit the praise and admiration they desperately covet. Raising Ken and Abby on his own after his wife’s death, Adam was a difficult father, distracted by grandiose professional ambitions, undermined by his mental illness. He called his children his “little monsters.” Ken, bullied at school, felt neglected; Abby felt demeaned as both a woman and an artist. Adam thought of her as “a special snowflake of the highest order.” As Brodeur’s narrative unfolds, tensions erupt, revealing festering wounds, anger, and pain. Through Ken’s sessions with an unfortunately stereotypical psychiatrist, the shocking details in Abby’s latest painting, and the appearance of a mysterious woman, the family’s “conspiracy of silence” is irrevocably shattered.
A sensitive portrait of troubled lives.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781982198107
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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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