If Chuck Palahniuk and Stephenie Meyer teamed up to write a spec script for Succession, this is what you might get.
This skewering of Silicon Valley startup culture is biting satire—complete with fangs.
Set in San Narciso, a barely fictionalized version of San Francisco, the story follows Chuck Gross, the disappointing scion of a billionaire who made his money the old-fashioned way: arms and labor exploitation. Chuck thinks he’s eager to separate himself from his family—he’s changed his name from Charles Grossheart and started a punk record label (secretly funded with family money, natch)—but everything changes when he’s actually cut off financially. He catches a break when he’s hired as a “creative consultant” by his college friend Olivia Watts, known as “Steve Jobs, but with a heart” in this fictional Silicon Valley. The one catch is that she would like the Grosshearts to invest. While Chuck doesn’t mind helping his family acquire more wealth, he quickly realizes that her startup’s “world-changing medical technology” is working toward the goal of “remov[ing] all human expiration dates” through means that are less scientific and more Nosferatu. Even as the perennial black sheep, Chuck has to decide if he can really involve his family in a plan that Bram Stoker couldn’t have dreamed up. It’s a clever idea, and as in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it’s a bit hard to tell where the line between satire and reality lies. If it turned out that the buzzy weight-loss drug Ozempic were derived from vampires, would people actually stop taking it? It’s hard to imagine a world where rich folks offered a shot at immortality and incredible wealth wouldn’t take it, even if it came with insatiable bloodlust. While the plot takes a while to unfurl and Chuck, who seems to embody the concept of “failing upwards,” is not exactly relatable, anyone who enjoyed the delicious schadenfreude of the Theranos trial will get a kick out of this book.
If Chuck Palahniuk and Stephenie Meyer teamed up to write a spec script for Succession, this is what you might get.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780593469675
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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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