A shining exploration of human frailty and endurance falters when it attempts social analysis.
A 44-year-old woman comes to terms with her life while attending an annual corporate banquet.
Software analyst Trisha Donahue always relished the annual boozy parties thrown at the Rose & Emerald restaurant in central Massachusetts by the Boston company where she’s worked for eight years. But new management runs the company with a more corporate ethos, and speechifying has replaced drinking alcohol, no longer allowed, at the now unofficially mandatory banquets. Having learned that she’s been passed over for a promotion she was all but promised, Trisha is a reluctant attendee this year. Then she’s stunned, not in a good way, when management announces to the crowd that she’s the first woman “Employee of the Year.” Trisha flees within the passageways of the almost magically charming Rose & Emerald, located (perhaps too) coincidentally in the community where she grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks.” While Cooney effectively draws peripheral characters like Trisha’s privileged yet self-aware husband and her stoic, ailing boss, the only character that truly matters here is Trisha. As she struggles through this one crazy day, she reviews her evolution from a working-class girl with brains and ambition to a woman afraid to rock the status quo. The depiction of Trisha’s middle-class financial anxiety is spot-on, but Cooney lays on the sociopolitical critique with a heavy hand. Trisha so relentlessly complains about blockheaded bosses and bemoans turning “corporate” that the good reasons she’s angry become boring. The novel’s explorations of class inequality and corporate mentality seldom reach beyond the obvious, and its perspective on society’s unfair treatment of women seems dated—Trisha has no awareness of the #MeToo movement, and her thoughts on what clothes a successful woman needs, including pantyhose, feel anachronistic. But Cooney is remarkably adept at capturing minute inner crises within an individual and the imperfect but real connections between people. While the writing can be pessimistic, even cynical, neither Cooney nor her central character is afraid to look kindness in the face when it arises. No mean feat.
A shining exploration of human frailty and endurance falters when it attempts social analysis.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781566896719
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 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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