An elegant novel about the ways pain can shape a man’s personality.
In Walsh’s debut novel, a Connecticut man survives the hell of war only to lead a lonely peacetime existence back home.
Joe DaSilva grows up in a small town on the banks of the Connecticut River, the son of a Portuguese waterman. He spends his childhood learning to tie knots from his father, getting into trouble with his best friend Bill Crawley, and pining after his childhood crush, Peggy. The week before high school graduation, Joe proposes to Peggy only to be rejected. The brokenhearted Joe quickly enlists in the Navy—there’s a war coming, after all—despite the reservations of his parents. With Bill in tow, Joe sails for Manila just in time to get attacked by the Japanese military (a wounded Bill is shipped to Australia before the coming Japanese invasion, but Joe stays behind and is captured when the Philippines fall). He somehow survives the Bataan Death March, a prison camp, malaria, and dysentery, but when he makes it back to Connecticut at war’s end, he’s a shell of his former self. Even worse, he learns that Peggy and Bill have become engaged in his absence. Resentful of his closest friends and wracked by post-traumatic stress, Joe settles into a stoic life as a mechanic. For the next 40 years, he’s content to repress his memories of the war—and all of his other grievances—until a new waitress takes a job at one of the local restaurants. Leigh Ann and her young daughter, Shelly, are new in town. Shelly spends her days alone at a vacant hotel while Leigh Ann works her shift, and Joe takes it upon himself to keep an eye on the child. As Joe inserts himself into their lives, he can’t help but allow them into his own. In the process, he’s finally forced to deal with the many ghosts of his past.
The author is a skilled storyteller with a knack for bringing scenes to vivid life, whether they depict a bucolic afternoon spent fishing on the river or a terrifying moment from the war: “He was barely able to rise to one knee the night the Japanese burst into camp. The first rifle butt to the back of his head folded the hemispheres of his brain in on each other. He lay there on his side, time out of body, eyes recording the scene like a camera knocked to the ground, still rolling.” The novel takes its time getting started, and the early chapters are burdened with an unfortunate sentimentality. From the point the war commences, however, Walsh weaves an immersive narrative that does not let up for the rest of the book. Even when the story treads into familiar territory—older Joe is reminiscent of any number of late-career Clint Eastwood film performances as a grump waiting to have his heart softened—the author is deft enough at characterization and plotting to keep the material from feeling stale. Those looking for a bighearted tale of PTSD and catharsis will find much to love in Joe’s story.
An elegant novel about the ways pain can shape a man’s personality.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781977261120
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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