A well-crafted, fast-paced story about how a single encounter can shape a person’s whole life.
In the 1970s, haunted by a choice he made during World War I, an elderly Rhode Island man enlists the help of a college dropout in a last-ditch attempt to make amends.
Shortly after the U.S. enters World War I in 1917, Nick Burns finds himself on a farm in rural France. He’s killing time by painting a mural on a stone wall when he meets one of the farm’s residents, a feisty young woman named Camille Chastain, who dismisses his mural as the work of an amateur. While married and heavily pregnant, Camille has no aspirations to be a wife or a mother, only an artist. When German forces reach Nick’s trench amid bursts of artillery fire one night, she appears holding two bundles—her newborn son and an array of paintings—and entrusts him with their safety before fleeing into the nearby woods. What Nick does next dogs him for decades. Upon returning to the U.S., Nick tries to resume life but can’t forget about Camille or her child. Despite marrying another woman, he spends the next 57 years tortured by the seeming impossibility of discovering their fates. In 1974, isolated, depressed, and bitter, he receives a strange new lease on life: a terminal cancer diagnosis. Motivated by the knowledge that his time is limited, Nick and newly hired assistant Jenny, an IHOP waitress reeling from the unexpected derailment of her college career, embark on a search for answers that takes them through France and Italy before concluding at a derelict exhibit once run by Enzo Piccolo, a Neapolitan artisan. In traveling with Nick, Jenny hopes to see the world and, maybe, find her own place in it. Told in chapters that alternate among three perspectives—Nick’s, Jenny’s, and Enzo’s—the story is compelling, skillfully told, and meticulously structured, though a few beats veer a little too close to cliche to ring entirely true. Of particular note are Hood’s detailed descriptions of the different historical settings (Paris, small-town France, Rome, Tuscany, Naples), which feel rooted in research and heighten the authenticity of the narrative.
A well-crafted, fast-paced story about how a single encounter can shape a person’s whole life.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780393609806
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
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
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