A remarkable exploration of what it is to believe, to lose, and to start again.
Hurley probes the complexities of religious extremism, fraught family relationships, and the legacies of abuse in her subtle but engrossing second novel.
Nora is a hospice nurse struggling to come to terms with life outside the apocalyptic Christian cult in which she was raised. The cult leader, Nora’s father, teaches that “once the sin is in you, it only ever goes deeper,” and the relationship between faith and fear is arguably the core of the novel, which Hurley explores with deep empathy. The combination of a declining economy and increasingly volatile political milieu leads a group of disaffected people to come together to search for a better life. Hurley writes that the “plagues” of the contemporary U.S. are “amorphous and baffling: job losses, opioids, deaths of despair”—and shows how these systemic failures can be used to manipulate desperate people. Nora speaks in tongues to the growing cult, foreseeing the end of the world and promising that by following her father, they’ll be led to salvation. When the group relocates to the remote wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Hurley captures the area's harsh natural beauty in glorious prose, providing the reader some respite in a novel with very few points of light. The visceral descriptions of the cult’s survival techniques—hunting, boiling pine needles for protein, making herbal treatments for beaten women—draw the reader into the dark, insular world hidden among the trees. Hurley’s writing is beguiling, working analogously to the rhetoric of the cult. Even as the reader witnesses the manipulations, lies, and performances, it’s clear how familiarity, family, and isolation work to draw lost souls in. Nora’s eventual escape, her life in Chicago, and battle to stay away from the remaining cult members speak to the ways trauma haunts people. By paying specific attention to the misogyny Nora experiences during and after her time in the cult, Hurley exposes the violence done to women as ubiquitous—and categorically not limited to secular society. This is a deeply intimate novel, capturing what is in essence a survivor’s tale.
A remarkable exploration of what it is to believe, to lose, and to start again.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781632461490
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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