A violent, delirious blur.
A woman loses custody of her sons and her senses.
Lisa Trejman's hard-won family has fractured. She is alone in France, far from her native Argentina, and without the costume of normalcy she once wore. Lisa eschews each societally approved step back to custody (how she lost it is only hinted at); she prowls outside her sons’ school, harangues her lawyer, and arrives at a supervised visit bearing a chocolate bar and a knife in her purse. Lisa’s motivation to reclaim her children is a mixture, of unknown proportions, of maternal love, power play, and vengeance. The father who now cares for them did not want children. Lisa is Jewish, and her husband’s family made antisemitic complaints about the fact that their grandchildren would have Jewish heritage. Now, she watches from afar as the in-laws who insinuated that Jewish people “never wash their private parts” tend to her sons. That is, until Lisa sets her in-laws' farm on fire, grabs her sleeping sons, and runs. From then on, she’s a fugitive, journeying across Europe with the confused boys unbuckled in the backseat. Lisa’s narration skids from past to present in a haze of run-on sentences, forcing the reader to parse plot from paranoia. As she alienates herself from traditional human connection, she mocks it: “I pushed him into the river for love. I did what I did in the name of love. I molested her because I loved her too much.” Underpinning her venomous musings is the thesis that there can be no love without violence—that love is a kind of violence. This is no thriller, as there is no question or fear about whether something terrible will occur, only the straight and dreadful flight toward it. So assured is the totality of destruction that the author need not name its cause.
A violent, delirious blur.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780811238892
Page Count: 128
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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