An affecting and carefully drawn story of a family on the brink.
A family’s struggles in Philadelphia are echoed in turmoil in its ancestral Alabama.
Mathis’ follow-up to her brilliant debut, the novel-in-stories The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (2013), concerns three generations of one Black family. In 1985, Ava Carson has escaped her abusive husband, Abemi Reed, but is left homeless and jobless; the shelter that accepts her and her young son, Toussaint, is roach-infested, and lingering trauma interferes with her ability to get her life in order. Toussaint, meanwhile, plays truant and becomes enmeshed in the neighborhood’s street life. Mathis alternates Ava and Toussaint’s ongoing plight with a storyline narrated by Ava’s mother, Dutchess, a one-time traveling blues singer. She’s one of the last residents of an Alabama town, Bonaparte, which is slowly becoming overrun, at times violently, by encroaching white developers from the ironically named Progress Corp., which “pulled it up like a weed and threw it facedown in the dirt.” A glimmer of hope appears with the re-emergence of Toussaint’s father, Cassius Wright, a doctor and former Black Panther who’s trying to launch a much-needed (if technically illegal) neighborhood health clinic and strictly run commune. But order proves slippery, and the novel’s very structure implies that Black families separated by distance and broken by (mainly white) policing and development become nearly impossible to sustain. Mathis’ themes, and sometimes her prose, echo Their Eyes Were Watching God and Sula, two similarly lyrical stories rooted in place and relationships. Though this novel doesn’t enter their ranks, Mathis powerfully evokes the heartbreak and ways best efforts are undermined by social and legal machinery. A determination among all three characters defines the story—Dutchess, Ava, and Toussaint are inheritors of abuse, but Mathis makes them objects of indomitability, not pity.
An affecting and carefully drawn story of a family on the brink.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780525519935
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
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