A lighthearted romp, tinged with melancholy, that gently pokes fun at sexual mores and those who defy them.
What happens when a celebrated feminist carries on a highly charged affair with her only daughter’s closest friend?
Despite very different temperaments, Alice and Sadie have been inseparable since adolescence. They remain so in their early 20s, though easygoing Alice is halfheartedly pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles while hardworking Sadie remains in the Bay Area doggedly working her way up in a design firm. Celine is Sadie’s mother, a professor of lesbian-feminist theory at Berkeley who works hard to remain unconventional. When Alice gets a part in a play and Sadie can’t attend, she asks Celine to go in her place. A comic romantic nightmare ensues. Forty-four-year-old Celine is gobsmacked by her sudden attraction to Alice, whom she’s never before found particularly interesting, and Alice, who has enjoyed sex with a lot of men, surprises herself by responding to Celine’s attraction in kind. Caught up in their mutual desires and unable to acknowledge that Sadie may see their behavior as betrayal, the lovers tacitly agree not to mention their affair to her, even as weeks pass by. Meanwhile, Sadie is involved in her own sexual crisis: still being a virgin at age 23. Thanks to her unorthodox childhood with Celine, she's developed inhibitions she's trying to overcome, so far unsuccessfully, with her conveniently adoring, nerdy boyfriend—who, like Alice’s and Sadie’s fathers, remains so palely sketched he barely registers. The novel flits among the three women without going deep. Readers learn about Alice’s emotionally chilly mother and sympathize with Sadie’s trials as Celine’s daughter. Ultimately, though, the novel belongs to Celine, a larger-than-life personality full of contradictions. Her boundless love can be smothering, her ideas smart but half-baked, her boundary-breaking playful and cruel. She’s a would-be feminist goddess, monstrous yet hard to dislike.
A lighthearted romp, tinged with melancholy, that gently pokes fun at sexual mores and those who defy them.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781668021590
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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