An impressive collection rooted in the grief, trauma, tradition, resilience, and hope of Indigenous peoples.
Seventeen stories that explore the joy and sorrow of the Indigenous experience.
Peters, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her debut, The Berry Pickers (2023), returns with an impactful collection of short stories. The book opens with “(Winter Arrives),” which chronicles the arrival of the “pale ones” to Indigenous shores. The unnamed narrator’s father tells them that the “pale-faced” people will leave like they have in the past, but the narrator is less sure: “I think they may stay.” The devastating consequences of colonization—especially as it relates to the violent destruction of Indigenous families—are explored in the stories that follow. “In the Name of God” follows a pair of siblings as they navigate the horrifying reality of growing up in a residential school meant to strip them of their language, religion, and culture. In “Three Billion Heartbeats,” a mother-daughter relationship breaks under the weight of the younger woman’s abusive relationship. Before her daughter left for the city to study, her fearful mother told her not to forget that she is “a woman of the land. A woman of the trees and the lake, you belong to the grass.” The essential connection between the Indigenous characters and nature echoes throughout the collection. In “Tiny Birds and Terrorists,” a grieving mother becomes a water protector. When the local paper calls them “a ragged band of eco-terrorists,” another protector says the term is used to make white people afraid of people like them: “People who know we need the earth more than it needs us.” Many of the stories deal with grief—both spoken and unspoken; personal and generational; physical and spiritual—and how to survive in a world that’s trying to erase you. If some of the stories feel less robust than others, Peters’ sparse and striking prose more than makes up for it.
An impressive collection rooted in the grief, trauma, tradition, resilience, and hope of Indigenous peoples.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781646222599
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
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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