Ardent and intimate, a novel of physical and psychological vistas.
A young woman leaves Barcelona in search of the identity she believes she can find only in isolation.
On her 24th birthday, the narrator of this finely observed novel orchestrates a gathering that is “actually a fertilization party in disguise.” Since she was in college, she’s lived in an airy Barcelona apartment where she can hear the lions’ “ancient, roaring sorrows” from their cages in the nearby zoo, and now she works in a university position interviewing the elderly for a sociology study on longevity. Her colleagues view the data processing software they use in their work as an intermediary “spiritual guide” that will lead them to miracles of comprehension, but the narrator is overcome by “the desire to gestate, to have life course through [her] body, to create.” When her anonymous birthday coupling—her first with a man—doesn’t result in a pregnancy, she decides that, like the zoo animals, she is living her life in a cage. Thus, in “a rusty old Peugeot the size of an egg carton,” she sets off on a journey that takes her ever farther from the epicenters of human society until she ends up at Cal Llanut, an isolated farmhouse high in the mountains where she feels she will finally find the solitude she needs to live “cleaved to the rock like a root, sucking up nutrients until every finger, every tooth, every last one of [her] thoughts is worn through.” Meanwhile, her desire to have a child is as strong as ever, and those twin impulses—to isolate and to increase—fuel her in the pursuit of a kind of life that befits the austerity and self-reliance of her new landscape. At turns dazzling and brutally bitter, this slender volume refuses to clarify its intentions but rather allows its major themes an uneasy coexistence similar to the one the main character forges for herself. While this decision may frustrate readers looking for a comprehensive outcome to the speaker’s experiment in radical self-determination, Baltasar’s startling, poetic prose continues to sing long after the book has come to its indeterminate conclusions.
Ardent and intimate, a novel of physical and psychological vistas.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781916751002
Page Count: 144
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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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