An often beautiful, sometimes measured tale of aging and love.
In this debut novel, a gay couple in Portland, Oregon, face difficulties in the aftermath of a meteor shower.
Thom’s marriage to Howard has hit a rough patch. The two freelance writers are both stressed out from the hustle, which may or may not be the cause of the recent cooling of their sex life—a cooling that even the introduction of a third can’t thaw. “I knew I was just pining for the early days of our relationship when Howard found everything about me exciting,” thinks Thom. “Five years into our relationship, was I thinking about ending things or just breaking some of the rules?” Complicating things further are Howard’s chronic hip pain and his desire to have a child, a prospect that Thom dreads. An approaching meteor storm is filling the couple—and everyone else in Portland—with apocalyptic thoughts, but the Leonids bring something much stranger than Thom could ever have imagined. He awakens the next morning to learn that the warehouse across from their apartment has caught fire. He then watches a squirrel crawl through his neighbor’s open window and destroy their Eames chair. Using a handful of peanuts, Thom lures the squirrel into his apartment. Luckily, Howard is an animal lover, and he agrees to let Thom keep Gordito, as the animal is soon named. Thom comes to believe that Gordito can talk—one of a number of strange phenomena he’s observed lately. Gordito brings Thom a tiny meteorite, the one that set the fire in the warehouse, to which Thom begins to attribute growing levels of meaning and power. As Howard’s hip worsens and shows signs of a more serious condition, Thom becomes convinced of his ability to solve everything. But will Thom’s mind—and marriage—fall apart faster than Howard’s body?
Buchner is a poet, and his lyricism comes through in his prose. At one point Thom narrates: “Under that careless sun, on the sidewalk, I watched cars pass. Straight-faced strangers driving through their own lives. Their own thoughts bouncing through their heads. Not one of them had my thoughts—not this moment.” The author delights in the uninterpretable. The title comes from an inscrutable message that Thom finds on the bottom of a Snapple cap in lieu of the normal bit of trivia. The end of the world for these characters is less dramatic than a meteor shower, but the signs are all around them, waiting to be dissected for meaning. There’s something poetic in the way the narrative accumulates: Thom’s story is littered with digressions about the past and ruminations about the future. For this reason, it takes a while for the plot to gain momentum, and even then, it often feels like a process of slow decay rather than one of rising action. Thom’s is not the most pleasant head to inhabit, and readers at times will grow frustrated by his myopic ennui. But those who stick with the story will find a subtle examination of life at the edge of a mundane catastrophe.
An often beautiful, sometimes measured tale of aging and love.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798985492743
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Buckman Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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