A slim, sporadically powerful novella about exile and migration.
An Iranian refugee attempts to cross illegally into Europe in Majedi’s debut novella.
It’s been four years since the unnamed narrator escaped his native city of Khorramshahr and the oppressive mullahs of Iran’s Islamist regime. He’s spent them in Turkey, where his refugee status guarantees him a life laboring in the tea fields. His goal is to cross illegally into Greece and try to make a life for himself in the secular lands of Europe. He joins a group of desperate men—including a confessed child molester—in their attempt to cross the border. Without proper clothing or supplies, the man must brave river crossings, muddy quagmires, hills covered in thorn bushes, and Greek soldiers who don’t seem to embody Western values of freedom and clemency any more than the mullahs he left behind did. As he proceeds along his odyssey, the man reflects on his life in Iran—his university, which simply reinforced the dictates of the regime; his peers, who were encouraged to fight and die in Syria; the political prisoners locked away and forgotten in concrete cells; and his mother, who starved herself to feed him. Will Europe prove an escape from senseless violence and religious extremism, or will the narrator simply find the same old horrors in new forms? Majedi captures the high emotion of the narrator’s predicament, though the dense prose tends to call attention to its own craft; reflecting on his night crouching on the frontier, the narrator observes, “In this waiting, the border became a liminal space, mirroring the suspended state of my life between past traumas and uncertain horizons.” (The story sometimes feels as though it is narrated not by the protagonist but by his anxiety.) Readers get surprisingly few specifics about the man’s life; the author instead largely provides decontextualized moments of injustice and political opining. Other characters are sketched with even greater vagueness. The topic is fascinating, and Majedi builds to a poignant conclusion, but one wishes he offered a fuller portrait.
A slim, sporadically powerful novella about exile and migration.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781069771018
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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