Moschovakis continues to provoke her readers to ask: What is a story? Or, even, what is a life?
A woman who has come to a crossroads in her life travels a city in the midst of a cataclysm to find someone she intends to murder.
The unnamed narrator of Moschovakis’ latest is an actor at the end of her career. Just prior to an ongoing seismic catastrophe that will alter the basic structures of society, she had an event of her own that rearranged the underpinnings of her identity. At a production in a park in which the narrator had a pivotal role, a protest had broken out and she forgot her lines for the first time in years, but instead of forcing the show to go on, she addressed the protesters directly, admitting, “You’re right, you’re right—We don’t know what we’re doing—We don’t know what we’re doing and we keep doing it anyway…But I’m an actor—I don’t speak, I repeat.” After this was proclaimed a disaster “of the career-ending, unmitigated kind” by the critics, and the narrator was forced to take in a boarder to make ends meet. The boarder, Tala, has what the narrator can no longer lay claim to: youth, beauty, and the kind of self-confident elegance necessary to do things like “cross the room without even stumbling” in the world of constant aftershocks the two inhabit. The narrator’s interest in Tala develops into a fixation that, when Tala doesn’t return home one morning, becomes a full-blown obsession—to find Tala, wherever she is, and murder her, so that by Tala’s erasure the narrator’s own identity as someone who speaks rather than just repeats can take form. What follows is an existential journey through the largely abandoned streets of the trembling city and through the narrator’s past in the world of theater, where, in order to become a character, she first had to learn how to unbecome herself. Told in a multitude of forms, including journal entries, transcriptions, and a form of collage cutup, this story advances the thematic precepts of Moschovakis’ earlier work: rejecting binaries for the more shrouded truths that can be found when language, morality, and even individual selfhood are deconstructed.
Moschovakis continues to provoke her readers to ask: What is a story? Or, even, what is a life?Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781593767839
Page Count: -
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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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