At once a testament to and a caution against “the despairing human’s capacity for ingenuity.”
After Eleutheria (2022), Hyde returns to the climate crisis with a collection of short stories that jump between dystopias and parallel universes, seamlessly blending humor and tragedy.
The book's dedication—“For who we’ll be”—immediately signposts its fundamental concern: The way humankind (and more specifically, Americans) will navigate an increasingly inhospitable climate. There’s a sublime, filmic quality to the stories, in which Hyde expertly inverts the familiar. A swarm of caravans roam America, artists are kept in glass enclosures, and rehab facilities treat digital disorders. Hyde’s preoccupation with material (duct tape, tar, fiberglass) and endless references to environmental collapse (glacial melt, phosphorus runoff, extinction) don’t hinder the stories’ unrelenting pace. Indeed, it is within the quotidian that she gestures toward the West's soporific response to the climate crisis. While the pilgrimaging caravaners of “Mobilization” obsess over refueling—dwindling resources are “probably a localized issue”—the reader grows agitated by their self-necrotizing, reckless consumption. The quintessential freedom of the American dream is continually exposed as an impossibility, the pursuit of which is entirely bound to the systems of capitalism and colonialism. In “The Future Is a Click Away,” paying for the automated convenience of “individualized commodity distribution” destroys the finances and mental wellbeing of entire communities, highlighting the impossibility of consumer free will. In the subterranean village of “The Eaters,” a celebrated historian observes that “our planet evolved on the premise of interdependence, yet human beings have insisted upon exceptionalism. No system can save us.” The gender dynamics of heteronormative relationships are skewered in “Loving Homes for Lost & Broken Men,” and the fetishization of youth is exposed as essentially grotesque in “Democracy in America.” For Hyde, the U.S. is the “paradise no one could truly enter.” We're invited along on an often bizarre ride in which we see the ridiculousness of our own world reflected back at us, with Hyde managing to stress the urgency of the climate catastrophe without lecturing us.
At once a testament to and a caution against “the despairing human’s capacity for ingenuity.”Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593315262
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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