What starts as a bitter internal dialogue becomes a rich overlap of the personal and the political.
This tightly wound novel follows a terminally ill woman on a quest to take vengeance against her long-absent father.
Hester, a corporate attorney in Manhattan, prides herself on her lack of emotional needs and connections, although she does like sex with strangers if they’re creepy enough. On the verge of turning 40, she discovers she has aggressive breast cancer and will die in six months unless she gets treatment. Instead, she quits her job and begins a cross-country drive to the California home of her father, an artist whom she last saw when she was 18, shortly after her mother’s death. Cancer aside, Hester is an emotionally damaged character, almost cringeworthy in her alienation from normal human feelings. Drawn with knife-sharp prose, she is a woman choosing to close herself off. Her travel plan is simple: “Drive west, find Dad, kill Dad, then self.” She claims that she’s wanted to kill her father since her parents’ divorce when she was 13. There’s a history of violence involved that Hester never allows to come fully into focus. Of course, her plans go awry in small and large ways. When her car is stolen, she can afford a rental; when visiting people from her past proves unnerving, she can escape. But what ultimately succeeds in throwing Hester’s equilibrium off balance is the bond she forms with a hitchhiker. John is an activist whose cause is “the dying world,” and Hester begins taking detours so he can photograph Superfund sites while fending off brushes with the law. Still in his early 20s, John is an idealistic extremist but also a character of profound integrity who cares deeply about both issues and people. Without being sexual, Hester and John’s relationship changes Hester—and the novel—for the better, weakening her self-protective solipsism while broadening her outlook to consider the world beyond her problems.
What starts as a bitter internal dialogue becomes a rich overlap of the personal and the political.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781250360885
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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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