Darkly charming, highly original, and fiendishly clever.
In 1974, a 19-year-old telephone company employee in an abusive marriage finds her way to freedom.
“Now this Sock Man had dubbed me with his sock, and had claimed me as kin, and I remembered what I had always known: I was Daughter of Dirk. I was Minion of the Crab Queen. I was in a full fever. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was supernatural. I was uncanny. I was magnificent.” When we meet Celia Dent, she has not yet become aware of her uncanny magnificence: She is working at the telephone company where her job is to disconnect the lines of those with unpaid bills—“We called it ripping your lips”—caught up, along with her co-workers, in the grisly details of the murder of one of their colleagues by her husband, which occurred with a second colleague hastily hidden under the bed, but a used condom on the floor in plain view. The death of Vivienne Bianco is oddly titillating to Celia, which she knows is not the right reaction, but ascribes to the oppressive and dull reality of her daily life. Orphaned and alone by 17, she’d made the grave error of marrying a brutish man she refers to as “my Drew,” and her home life is so unpleasant that her tedious commute on the train and her depressing job (where she must deal with unsavory callers like the Sock Man) feel like a welcome escape. The death of Vivienne Bianco sets something new in motion, and Oshetsky is an author who relishes bold and sometimes surreal swipes of plot—more melodrama and mayhem are on the way, noirish twists delivered with a deadpan comic spin. With her collection of desecrated Barbies, her naïveté, and her poor impulse control, Celia is a fetching character for whom the reader dearly wishes a positive outcome, despite all the dead bodies that seem to be accumulating around her.
Darkly charming, highly original, and fiendishly clever.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780063466487
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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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