Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.
McFarlane contemplates the ripple effects of violent crime in 12 intricately layered stories based on an actual string of serial killings in 1990s Australia.
The diverse stories travel across decades and continents. The criminal investigation never becomes the central plot; the killer himself, here called Paul Biga, remains offstage while his victims appear only in fleeting mentions or glimpses. The protagonists’ connections to the crimes range from close to barely tangential. Timing matters, one story traveling back to 1950, when Biga’s future mother is 8 years old, another heading forward to a 2028 true-crime podcast. The opening story introduces the crimes’ physical reality, following a reluctant visitor to the forest where Biga’s victims had been found years earlier and where a sense of evil, and sexual, possibility still pervades. In 2003, an elderly woman’s lingering shame over her adolescent love for another girl resonates more powerfully than her more recent memories of Biga as her neighbor. Secret sexuality permeates characters’ lives, as does paranoia. Readers share a young woman’s growing fear in 1996 as she follows news reports that reveal a disquieting number of traits her boyfriend shares with an unidentified killer on the lam. Is it protective or paranoid maternal instinct pushing another woman to warn her younger sister against marrying a vaguely creepy boyfriend a decade earlier, in 1986? McFarlane uses the adventures of British schoolgirls in 1995 Rome to create misleading fear and tension before revealing a character who symbolizes resilience in the book. The travails of a politician unfortunately named Biga running for office four days after Paul Biga’s arrest offers discomforting comic relief. Given the large role media influence plays throughout, inevitably a television series about Biga shows up in 2024. So does Covid-19 in 2020, putting into perspective a single serial killer’s insignificance in a world reeling with global crises. However entertaining, McFarlane’s stories continually remind readers that behind true-crime stories’ escapist pleasure exist real death and human pain.
Addictively engaging, profoundly serious fiction from an underappreciated master.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780374606268
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
