Money changes everything (if you can get your hands on it).
Prizewinning Spanish poet Medel’s debut novel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye.
A series of interlocking narratives about María, Carmen, and Alicia—all working-class women who find themselves in the capital city for varied reasons—the novel traces transformations in Spanish life, culture, and politics from the end of the Franco era to the 21st century. The lives of Medel’s three protagonists, however, remain tied to their troubling economic circumstances, and a telling epigraph from Philip Larkin (“Clearly money has something to do with life”) provides a clue to the direction the women’s stories will take. A teenage pregnancy forces unmarried María out of her family’s modest provincial home to the city, away from her baby, Carmen, and into a series of demanding, physically exhausting jobs. Carmen’s apparently good fortunes turn after the suicide of her debt-burdened husband, and she and her school-age daughters struggle in the aftermath. Alicia, one of Carmen’s daughters, is haunted by her father’s death and floats through life with a lackluster retail job, stultifying marriage, and a habit of picking up random men for brief, distracting sexual encounters. Economic insecurity forces all three to compromise dreams and life choices, and some notes of their lives echo in the others (albeit in ways unrecognized by the women). The 2018 Women’s March in Madrid frames the beginning and end points of the novel and allows Medel to bring some of her major players together on one stage even if they are acting in their own dramas. The translation from Spanish of Medel’s unvarnished look at three constrained lives is unsentimental and direct.
Money changes everything (if you can get your hands on it).Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64375-211-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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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