Two women learn that music and friendship can bloom from loss and hard times.
A young woman struggles to understand her relationship to a country music legend.
Marijohn Shaw’s origin story sounds a little like a fairy tale: As an infant, she was found nestled in a basket outside a gas station in a rural Appalachian town and raised by Abe Shaw, the lonely but kind man who owns the place. The only clues to her identity were a note stating her first name and a broken mandolin. But just before Abe found her that day in 1973, he’d had a memorable customer: Elle Harlow, a young country singer-songwriter on the cusp of success. Abe was a huge fan, but like all Elle’s fans he was about to be disappointed. After a betrayal and a public act of violence, she disappeared, but Abe has always believed she’s connected to Marijohn. As the novel opens in 1991, those events are 18 years in the past, and Marijohn is facing questions about her future as well as her past. Then, through a bizarre series of events featuring a meteor and a video, Elle reappears, right on Abe’s doorstep, demanding the return of the mandolin and seemingly denying any relationship to Marijohn. Where she has been and why she chose to vanish form much of the book’s plot as it moves among several timelines, recounting Elle’s childhood in Appalachia and her formative friendship with a folk healer and musician named Merry, then her ambitious flight to Nashville to pursue a career in music, first successfully, then disastrously. In the book’s present, Elle becomes the kind of mentor to Marijohn that Merry was to her but struggles to imagine her own future. Some of Elle’s self-examinations of her motives and the lyrical passages about the saving grace of music get repetitive, and a couple of romances lean toward the too-good-to-be-true. But the novel is insightful in its depiction of complex relationships between women and of the grueling and sometimes dark sides of the music business.
Two women learn that music and friendship can bloom from loss and hard times.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250399304
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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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