A show-stopping novel that carries within it a quiet, steadfast heart.
Two friends face their own erasure in this post-pandemic meditation on love, sex, and mortality.
Since earliest childhood, Adrian has been desired with a fervor that approaches religious ecstasy. Though his beauty imperils him as a child, Adrian grows out of the cloistered life his fearful family has provided for him and moves to New York City, where he parlays it—his term for his enduring sex appeal—into a life of feckless comfort sponsored by literally thousands of friends. Adrian’s desirability only grows in power through his 20s, and he rides out the city’s Covid-19 isolation fully expecting to be able to return to a life where he “can be in love with anyone” as soon as a vaccine is available. Yet, when the masks come off, Adrian discovers that the previously unflagging power of it has waned, or at least become less universal in its appeal. To his horror, Adrian decides that, like other people, he may be “just as anonymous with his mask on as without.” Meanwhile, Mark, a renowned painter and one of Adrian’s very few real friends, has weathered the pandemic shutdown in his childhood home in Northern California, attending to both his mother and then his sister as they succumb to a brutal autoimmune condition with which Mark has also been diagnosed. Thirty years older than Adrian and still grieving the loss of his husband, Arturo, Mark is immune to it, and the feelings he has toward Adrian are protective rather than proprietary. However, as Mark’s condition worsens and Adrian’s it continues to wane, both men must find the answer to the questions they ask as their worlds inexorably alter (am I memorable? can I be seen?) in the light of the other’s enduring care. The novel’s conceit is big, its prose attention-grabbing, its sexual joie de vivre propulsive, but, in the end, the most compelling part is the tender nuance of its central characters as they love both each other and the world. The result is a rare gem of a book—afraid of neither joy nor sorrow and patient enough to find the human heart inside all its gorgeous language.
A show-stopping novel that carries within it a quiet, steadfast heart.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781646222834
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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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