The resilience of sisterly bonds forms the backbone of this swirling, heart-wrenching debut.
A captivating rendition of early-20th-century El Salvador.
Graciela and her four closest friends grow up on a coffee plantation nestled on a volcano, surrounded by the “joyful ferocity” of their mothers’ love. Their lives on the estate are simple but vibrant. They think little of men, including their fathers, until a man from the capital comes looking for Graciela. Her absent father was the second-in-command and spiritual adviser to the ambitious general referred to as El Gran Pendejo, and he has died. She is summoned to the capital to pay her respects and there meets her long-lost sister, Consuelo, who was kidnapped from their village by her father as a gift for his barren wife. Both now trapped under the thumb of the general, the two reluctantly grow close until El Gran Pendejo, who has bloated into a full-fledged dictator, unleashes unspeakable terror on the nation’s Indigenous population. The inhabitants of their home village are massacred, including Graciela’s childhood friends, who narrate this tale from beyond the grave. In prose that, while supple, does not stray from the harshness of history, the voices of these four murdered girls unite in a ghostly chorus to project the story of their friend and her sister, survivors of genocide. Their visions of Graciela and Consuelo are riveting; the two women, both striking characters, build physically separate but spiritually linked lives in California and Paris in the 1930s. Balibrera eulogizes the lives lost in La Matanza, the real-life 1932 massacre of the Pipil people by the Salvadoran government, and underscores the value of holding one’s culture close, even when it threatens to disrupt just-scarring wounds. Despite the singular narratives sanctioned by those in power, “every myth, every story, has at least two versions,” and “if you don’t tell it properly, if you say it too quietly, you erase everyone’s face as you go.”
The resilience of sisterly bonds forms the backbone of this swirling, heart-wrenching debut.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593317235
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
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
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