Where you can see the stars at noon, a Dante reader will know, is in Hell—and Johnson, who has plumbed the territory before in Angels (1983) here surveys a corner of it that is Sandinista Nicaragua, 1984. His narrator is a female American semi-journalist, semi-hooker, a woman whose entropy is her strongest suit, who hustles at the bar of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Managua against a background of brain-frying tropical heat and the appalling self-destruction of a hapless society. Not a book, in other words, you'd give as a gift to your local Witness for Peace: in Johnson's portrait, Nicaragua comes off as a catastrophe plain and simple. And a menacing one, too. After the narrator meets a pale, tall, bumbling Englishman who represents an oil company and seems to have accidentally made vague commitments to Sandinista, Contra, and CIA alike, she finds herself in love/lust with the schmo but also having to fear for her life: he's casually but irrevocably been marked, and she'll get it also unless they can escape the country at the nearest border. That, in the end, she will, saving herself but also betraying her lover, is somehow only fitting in the jaundiced, ashen-mouthed scheme of the book. Some fine, illusionless, poetic prose is put to this purpose—but Johnson is working more with language and mood here than with people: the Englishman is especially nebulous and jellied, while the narrator, who over-quotes W.S. Merwin, also speaks in what's-it-to-ya dialogue that would have given even Raymond Chandler pause. What is most memorable—why this might have been a better non-fiction book—are the atmospheres: sounds, feels, smells; Johnson delivers an evocative and potently depressing travelogue, and does so with more savvy and unromantic political velleity than is found in books by, say, Graham Greene or Joan Didion. Ugly as sin but a little too pleased with that, maybe.
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1986
ISBN: 978-0-394-53840-2
Page Count: 181
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1986
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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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