Devastating yet hopeful stories about characters toiling to find refuge in the world.
Eight stories set around Flagstaff, Arizona.
In this debut collection, Louis, a Diné writer whose first volume of poetry won a 2018 American Book Award, writes of electricians and day laborers, custodians and aspiring writers, many of them Navajo, their lives constrained by poor pay and bad bosses, parole agreements and addiction, cultural expectations and racism. In “Volcano,” Phillip puts in 12- to 14-hour days installing conduit and running wire, all in hopes of getting a Saturday off to take his cousin’s son, who has been left in his care, on a hike. In “As Meaningless as the Origin,” the unnamed narrator gets shorted by a computer tech who has hired him to hang Sheetrock. The unrelenting grind of work, sometimes absent from fiction, takes center stage here, as Louis’ characters dig holes, fix engines, mop hallways, plaster walls, and taxi people around. Though the circumstances are often exploitative, this labor is also so closely described that Louis imbues it with beauty and worth—bestowing dignity on his characters. “Keeping my hands busy and moving product: that’s what I’d been good at—well, until I got caught,” reflects the narrator of “Usefulness,” as he’s expertly repairing a bus that will help a woman escape her alcoholic partner but also put his parole at risk. “But after that, just keeping my hands busy, my body busy.” Readers may hear echoes of Denis Johnson in brief lyrical landscape descriptions that appear throughout and the characters’ jewel-like insights, even in drug-altered states. “We weren’t ourselves and didn’t know it,” thinks the narrator of “Trickster Myths,” one of the collection’s many gut-punching pieces, as he’s about to kill a coyote, a futile attempt to right an evening gone terribly wrong. “Our outlines were blurred beyond the fault of our vision.”
Devastating yet hopeful stories about characters toiling to find refuge in the world.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64445-203-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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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