A deeply moving exploration of doing and undoing, birth and death—of what we inherit and what we choose to reject.
A woman moves to Germany in search of a new beginning—but can she truly escape her past?
Abandoning her ex-boyfriend and her unfulfilling job in Buenos Aires, the unnamed Argentinian narrator of Maliandi’s novel returns to Heidelberg, where she and her family lived for the first five years of her life. There, she hopes to find “some place that [is] mine, a place of my own, far away from everything.” Instead, the narrator, who seems to be “directionless” and “drifting,” is met with a series of unexpected and challenging events: She discovers that she’s pregnant, and she doesn’t know whether the father of her child is her ex-boyfriend or a one-night-stand; she befriends a Japanese student, Shanice, who dies by suicide, and then befriends Shanice’s unsettled, grieving mother; she reunites with Mario, a family friend from her earlier Heidelberg days, only to begin a romance with Joseph, whom she presumes is or once was his lover. Each encounter with these complex worlds undoes Maliandi’s protagonist a little further—can she survive as an expectant mother in a foreign country? Through the protagonist’s relationship with Shanice’s mother, Mrs. Takahashi, Maliandi examines matrilineal cycles and questions of generational inheritance: Her protagonist is expecting a daughter in the same city where she was once a child, while Mrs. Takahashi must bury her daughter in a country thousands of miles from home. The line between mother and daughter begins to blur: “I have fitful dreams of a little girl playing in a clearing in the woods. It could be me or it could be another little girl, it could be my daughter.”
A deeply moving exploration of doing and undoing, birth and death—of what we inherit and what we choose to reject.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781999859336
Page Count: 137
Publisher: Charco Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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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