This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece.
The complicated, unseen lives of American corporate wives in Saigon, 1963.
For more than 40 years, McDermott’s deep understanding of human nature and wizardry in creating characters has been the seedbed of one bestselling, award-winning novel after another. Now she has outdone herself with an exquisitely conceived and executed novel that explores her signature topic, moral obligation, against the backdrop of the fraught time preceding the Vietnam War. It would be a shame to reveal the structure of the novel (don’t even read the jacket description!), but it opens with a scene packed like a perfect suitcase with every important theme, character, and concern. The narrator, Patricia, begins in an epistolary vein, describing the languorous morning of a woman whose primary role is “helpmeet” to her husband, a lawyer for the Navy: doing her nails, writing letters, bathing, finally putting on her panty girdle and dressing for lunch. These observations are addressed to a “you,” whom we then meet at the party (it’s like one of those brilliant rolling long shots in a movie): “She was about seven or eight, in her Sunday best like the rest of us...She held a Barbie doll in the crook of her arm, like a scepter.” This is Rainey; she has a baby brother whom Patricia accepts happily from their busy, bossy mother, Charlene (Patricia dearly hopes to be a mother herself soon) but who immediately vomits all over her. While the house girl, Lily, helps her clean her dress, Rainey shows her the gorgeous clothes Lily’s made for Barbie. Lily, a talented seamstress, whips out another outfit then and there, a “perfect little áo dài: the slim white pants, the long overdress.” As soon as she sees “Saigon Barbie,” Charlene is inspired to a charitable fundraising scheme, which she pretends Patricia came up with (poor Patricia, feeling crankier and more ill-used by the second), brusquely relieving Rainey of her doll to begin production without delay. “The tears that stood in your eyes, illuminating, or so it seemed, the blue of your irises, withdrew themselves—there was no other word for it. Not a one ever fell.” After you finish the book, you’ll want to reread this chapter. How the heck did she do it? All the complications of power, control, and self-control; who does and doesn't get what they want; the crimes committed in service of “helping” people—what a brilliant way to tell a story about Vietnam.
This transporting, piercing, profound novel is McDermott’s masterpiece.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780374610487
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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