An evocative, artful reimagining of the madness of an ancient hero.
Classicist and poet Carson produces a scrapbooklike rendering of a lesser-known Greek tragedy.
In Herakles, staged in 416 B.C.E., Euripides imagined the demigod returning home to Thebes to find his household under assault by usurper Lykos, who is bent on eliminating the royal house of Amphitryon. As with all tragedies, much of the context is provided by a chorus—here, of old men who, though wise, can’t do much about the situation. With a collagelike text incorporating drawings and sketches, some with splashes of color, Carson works a few plot points of the original, which contains about 1,425 lines as against Carson’s few score. It’s modernized, too; Amphitryon lives in an Airstream, driven from his palace by a “totalitarian cracker.” (It’s not hard to imagine whom Carson might have been thinking of there.) Although they have taken refuge at an altar, Lykos is so irreligious as to plan to burn out Amphitryon, Herakles’ wife, and their kids, “obliged to close our lids / before we’d like.” The chorus invokes V.I. Lenin and the dictatorship of the proletariat, while Lykos, entering with his goon squad, allows that he’s “a basically / outcomes-oriented guy.” When Herakles—H of H, that is, whose name is explained—arrives, he plangently recalls the labors he’s been set to do, again drawing on Bolshevik history and throwing in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for good measure. Naturally, tragic things ensue; after a spasm of divinely induced madness that causes Herakles to distribute death a little more broadly than he might have wished, all he can say is “Alas” and long for death. Leave it to Theseus, his demidivine pal, to keep him on point: “What could be more useless than you limping offstage to die in a dead language?” Carson’s anachronisms, like those of Christopher Logue, are jarring but suggestive, and the language often attains a nobility worthy of the original tragedians, as when the chorus sings, “We go in tears. / So many swift and dirty years.”
An evocative, artful reimagining of the madness of an ancient hero.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8112-3123-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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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