Written with care and clarity, each story is something of a puzzle that becomes more puzzling as it proceeds.
A collection of four narratives that are like literary labyrinths from which there is no way out.
A love of wordplay and the process of storytelling illuminates these pieces. The concluding The Magic Eye—a novella longer than the three preceding entries combined—presents a protagonist who is a writer of stories much like the Brazilian author’s. He describes life as “a set of building blocks,” as well as “a blindfolded race” and “a puzzle in which certain pieces are left out.” The protagonist is not only the writer of this narrative but a character within it, responding to the turns of plot dictated by a dream his wife has shared with him and a visit from their building’s superintendent, who was also in her dream. Within these layers of narrative, they have been isolated from the outside world by pandemic and quarantine, the two of them trapped within their apartment, where he is trapped inside his head with his sentences and story line: “stories interwoven with dreams and nightmares he had no control over.” He ultimately arrives at “a different view, according to which life could take on the form of an endless canvas, where fiction and reality merged with the inconsistency of dreams.” He seems like an extension of the protagonist of an earlier story, “Albatross,” about a writer (with a dreaming wife) who inherits an island that he’s told is deserted, where he encounters some unexpected visitors. The first and shortest story, “Remains From the Fair,” features a man whose father has Alzheimer’s disease, but a visit from the police suggests that the protagonist is himself confused by his tenuous hold on reality. “Turn of the River” is both the slightest and most fantastical, about an orphan in the jungle who builds his own plane.
Written with care and clarity, each story is something of a puzzle that becomes more puzzling as it proceeds.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781954276505
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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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