These brilliant stories exist in the space between desire and complication.
There’s nothing quite like a David Means story.
Jangly, elliptical, apparently autobiographical in some sense (but maybe not), his work functions like a series of Russian nesting dolls, one layer leading inexorably to the next. The 10 pieces in his sixth collection—he is also the author of the novel Hystopia (2016)—begin with small scenes, anecdotal encounters: the hospital workers in the title story, “somewhat lonely-looking figures, taking a smoke break, back behind a trailer, leaning toward each other as they talked softly beside a row of neatly trimmed bushes”; the man in the grief encounter group “who lost his teenage daughter two years ago, chasing after a Frisbee into the road.” Means is a genius of the fragment: Some of the narratives here include subtitled sections, a strategy that recalls “Two Ruminations on a Homeless Brother,” which appeared in Instructions for a Funeral (2019). But even those that don’t work this way build their effects incrementally, moving back and forth from the action to the reflective eye of the narrator, who bears a striking resemblance to the author himself. Means makes this clear from the opening story, “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog,” which he narrates from the perspective of a canine even as he acknowledges the challenges of doing so. “I wish I could make words be dog,” he writes, “…find the way to inhabit the true dynamic, to imagine a world not defined by notions of power, or morality, or memory, or sentiment, but instead by pure instinct.” What he’s addressing are the limitations of literature as well as its possibilities. This conundrum sits at the center of this remarkable set of stories, which seek to destabilize the illusions of fiction even as they embrace and heighten them. How does he do it? Let’s call it presence, both that of the characters and of the writer, whose language lives and grows by such an interplay. "Do your best to be as specific as possible while also bending around the truth so as to protect the living,” he implores in “The Depletion Prompts.”
These brilliant stories exist in the space between desire and complication.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60608-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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
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
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