A strong story with an engaging protagonist.
A search for her father takes a 16-year-old Parisienne on a voyage of self-discovery across two continents and two decades.
When we meet Delphine in September 1945, she tells us she has killed someone but gives no details until much later. We know right away who she thinks her father is: Ernest Hemingway, who Delphine’s mother says was her lover for two years before their baby was born in 1929 and he decamped to the U.S. Despite having dealt with her mother’s alcoholism and unreliability throughout her childhood, Delphine fiercely believes this to be true. This conviction carries her first to New York, where she takes refuge in Harlem with a nurturing Black couple who knew her mother in Paris, then later to Havana, where she has heard Hemingway is living. Her quest for Papa is the narrative line on which Lemmie hangs a touching coming-of-age tale. Delphine exhibits the classic traumatized personality of an alcoholic’s child: simultaneously guilty and angry. She assuages the guilt in New York by befriending and trying to help a drug-addicted party girl; when that blows up, she flees for Havana. There, she settles in to write the novels that will show Papa she is truly his daughter. She does eventually make contact, but the novel’s central action over the next 14 years is Delphine’s slow maturation, which includes clearer-eyed assessments of her mother, Hemingway, and even his books that she once uncritically admired. Her growth is fostered in large part by Javier, initially hired as her guide and translator but ultimately her friend and savvy mentor. Castro’s overthrow of the Batista regime paves the way for the final stage in Delphine’s odyssey. She has chronicled her struggles and insecurities so affectingly that readers are likely to be tolerant of closing chapters that too neatly wrap up a plot grounded in messy ambiguities.
A strong story with an engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780593185711
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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