A dramatic, intriguing but uneven tale about love and female friendship.
In this novel, a group of close friends faces a variety of marital troubles.
Sheila Leclaire’s friends are not doing great. Allie’s marriage has fallen apart after her husband’s infidelity. The breakup has shaken Valencia’s confidence in her own new marriage. She loves her husband, with whom she just eloped, but how can she be sure he won’t betray her at some point in the future? Mary’s marriage is undergoing a different sort of crisis. She and her husband definitely want to have kids, but she’s just learned from a doctor that she isn’t able to conceive. As the core of the group, Sheila is doing her best to provide sound advice and a supportive shoulder for her friends, especially the struggling Allie. “Allie was a lot of things,” Sheila narrates. “She was intelligent, brave, understanding, strong, fun, and bold. But she was also very wise. She wasn’t born smart, but she learned her lessons through dealing with life. She walked down some difficult paths and even after she would lose the battles, she did not let it stop her.” At the same time, the story explores Allie’s origins, particularly the love affair between her parents that led to betrayal, addiction, and ultimately death. The question is: Can love end any other way? At its best, Foster’s prose is urgent and magnetic, as here where Valencia starts to suspect her husband is cheating: “She felt a shiver running down her spine; she had goosebumps. At that moment, she radiated heat. She rushed to look at herself in the mirror. Clearly, she was scared to death. The thought had taken over her mind, and she refused to get it out of her head.” But in this sequel, the author is a chronic underwriter: She underexplains her characters’ situations and underdescribes their environments. Characters eat unspecified “food.” In one section, when Allie is breaking down in front of Sheila, it only becomes clear they are sitting in a restaurant seven pages into the scene, when Sheila motions for a waitress. Readers will spend so much time trying to figure out what is going on that the pleasures of the larger plot will be frequently stifled.
A dramatic, intriguing but uneven tale about love and female friendship.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73722-446-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Global Publishing Solutions, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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