Glorious prose creates a grand, sometimes over-the-top sweep of facts, fantasy, and intriguing characters.
A mysterious tapestry brings the past to life for generations of women in one Hindu family.
The tapestry’s current guardian is Ayukta, a sculptor in Brooklyn. Although her ancestral memories go back further, she begins her story about 80 years ago with her grandmother Amla’s recollections of a happy childhood in Karachi, where Hindus and Muslims lived harmoniously together. But in 1947, when Amla was 10, Partition arrived. Amla’s mother died by political violence; Amla and her father escaped to Hindu Gujarat. Amla had the tapestry but, as a motherless girl, had to teach herself how to use it. She learned to experience her maternal ancestors’ lives. But her other new power—drawing events before they happened—was harder to understand, and one drawing caused her terrible grief. Years later, she gave the tapestry to her cautious, obedient older daughter, assuming Vibha would avoid her mistake. But after Vibha ensured the happy future of her book-smart, bold younger sister Arni in a drawing, Vibha made a fatal error. Mourning Vibha’s death, Amla feared Arni was too impulsive to trust with the tapestry, but Arni proved herself worthy, if more independent. She moved to America and became Ayukta’s mother. The intricacies of motherhood and daughterhood are thoroughly examined here. Ayukta has revealed the tapestry’s existence to her wife, Nadya, to explain her ambivalence about motherhood, and their conversations concerning the tapestry’s potential impact on any child they might raise together frequently interrupt Ayukta’s storytelling. Love between queer women takes shape as another theme through Ayukta and Nadya’s relationship, and also as Ayukta begins to realize the abiding love Amla shared with her rediscovered childhood friend Fiza—a “love [that] collapses time,” Ayukta says a bit oversentimentally. There is nothing sentimental, though, in Thanki’s views on the unintended consequences of Partition and the rise of nationalism.
Glorious prose creates a grand, sometimes over-the-top sweep of facts, fantasy, and intriguing characters.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593654644
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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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