A rumination on a life that could have been, this novel encapsulates queer history often left untold.
Decades after a collegiate romance, a woman looks back at the pivotal Sapphic encounter of her youth.
It's winter 1944 in London, and Bettina, known as Red—thanks to her fiery hair color—has a crush on Mara. Newly enrolled at the Horsham Science College, where Red studies zoology, the elegant, married Mara easily accepts Red’s invitation to partner in a cat dissection. An infatuation grows, Mara invites Red to her impressive flat to bathe, leading to Red’s first run-in with Mara’s gruff husband, Karl. Similarly to many casually coupled-up women they observe at the height of World War II, neither Mara nor Red sees any appeal in the opposite sex, longing only for each other. When Karl departs to Europe for business, the two women are free to explore their enchantment with each other, immediately becoming domestic partners and, as they both recognize out loud, lesbians. Since the story is presented as a reminiscence of “Mara's winter” by an older, married Red, who remembers this season, “its substance, the wrench of its happiness like a pain, an ecstasy,” the reader knows the couple is doomed early on. Still, the progression of their intimate connection, interwoven with Red’s coming-of-age, is entertaining. When Red visits her single Aunt Muriel for Christmas, Red’s ex-lover, Rhoda, is also invited, since she was included in past celebrations as a dear friend and roommate. The faux-friend trope rings true, as do, perhaps sadly, several others, as Red’s story offers peeks into several versions of not-so-covert lesbian life in the 1940s. “We agreed that each human being was both male and female, and anyone who denied both sides in themselves was lying,” Red and Mara conclude at the height of their romance. For the contemporary reader, this novel, originally published in 1962, feels like an astute observation on how compulsory heterosexuality has impacted and stifled society for generations.
A rumination on a life that could have been, this novel encapsulates queer history often left untold.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-946022-25-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: McNally Editions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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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