Winsome, sweet, and apocalyptic—a perfect blend for the end of days.
Amber Kivinen is going to Mars! She just has to win a game show first.
Amber and Kevin Watkins have known each other since second grade and have been going out since they were 17. When they left their hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario, to move to Vancouver, it was supposed to be for brighter horizons—an escape from their oppressive home lives and a chance to pursue their dreams. Ten years later, those dreams seem to have stalled out. Kevin’s ambition to be a screenwriter only lasted one semester in film school, and in spite of her master’s degree in environmental science, Amber is working as a receptionist. To supplement their incomes Amber and Kevin also run a small-scale hydroponic marijuana farm out of their basement apartment and, inevitably, partake fairly heavily of their product. For Kevin this life seems an ideal fit; he is perfectly content to go nowhere as long as he and Amber are “going nowhere together.” Amber, however, who was on track to become an Olympic gymnast before a shoulder injury sidelined her, has nowhere to channel the energy that propelled her to athletic greatness except into a cycle of self-destructive flirtations. That is, until she hears about the MarsNow mission and the attendant game show, a “Survivor-meets-Star-Trek amalgam,” in which the two winners—one man and one woman—will receive one-way tickets to Mars as the first Marsonauts in billionaire tech guru Geoff Task’s settlement. Seemingly against all odds, Amber is chosen to appear on the show; then, as 12 grueling weeks of challenges winnow down the competitors, it becomes a real possibility that she might win, leaving Earth, and Kevin, behind forever. Part disaffected-slacker rom-com, part social satire, part wistful end-of-the-world eulogy for ordinary, unscripted love, this novel veers close to the kind of wearying cynicism and late-stage capitalist master-villainy that would make its conceit feel familiar. Yet again and again the novel saves itself from this fate by the very real hope at the heart of its main characters’ binary orbit around each other—that love may be enough after all; if not to save them, then at least to make sure they will not be forgotten.
Winsome, sweet, and apocalyptic—a perfect blend for the end of days.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780393285918
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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