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THE ABSOLUTE

Name: THE ABSOLUTE
Author: Daniel Guebel
ISBN: 978-1-64421-160-1

by Daniel Guebel ; translated by Jessica Sequeira ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2022

A Borges-ian masterwork that neatly blends magic realism, mysticism, and off-color yarns into a superb whole.

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Intellectually adventurous, multigenerational novel of a family’s quest to find meaning in the world.

We meet our narrator early on in this sprawling novel, but we get to know him only near its end. Meanwhile, Argentine writer Guebel serves up an entertaining shaggy dog—or perhaps shaggy cat, considering the unpleasant fate at the paws of a feline that a minor character suffers—tale that stretches over three centuries. Frantisek is a wayward young man who hires a music tutor and then heads for Siberia to teach lessons to the wives of the provincial bourgeoisie, which lands him a “career as a clandestine lover.” Frantisek attempts to make of his dangerous liaisons a sort of symphony that, in time, grows into what might be “rightly considered to have been the first symphonic poem,” Berlioz notwithstanding. Frantisek’s son transposes the family gift for systematics into a political philosophy built on the Jesuit precepts of Ignatius Loyola, one that years later finds an acolyte in Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, who, our narrator proposes, invented the Russian working class just as St. Paul invented a messiah: “Such a political gesture—which no ‘leftist’ understood at the time—clearly reveals to us that [Lenin] took maximum advantage of the lessons imparted during his months at the monastery.” Another ancestor decides to try his luck at assassinating an archduke and touching off a war only to wind up in a game of cat and mouse in a distant desert prison, while Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander Scriabin, Madame Blavatsky, and other historical figures step onto the stage to play roles large and small. And as for that narrator? Let’s just say that he does the family proud, deftly stepping from historical fiction to science fiction and witnessing “the Universe just prior to its unfolding, naked of any wrapping, like one of those hard bitter candies that taste of pitch and melt like a rock in your mouth.”

A Borges-ian masterwork that neatly blends magic realism, mysticism, and off-color yarns into a superb whole.

Pub Date: April 5, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-64421-160-1

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Seven Stories

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE JEWISH SON
by Daniel Guebel ; translated by Jessica Sequeira

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE CORRESPONDENT

by Virginia Evans ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2025

An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.

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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.