Familial awkwardness and bizarre imagery take this story of unrest and disquiet to memorable places.
The narrator of this taut, surreal novel finds herself stranded in a strange rural landscape.
As Oyamada’s novel begins, a married couple has decided to move to a rural area because narrator Asa’s husband has been transferred there. His new office is near where his parents live, and they offer the couple the newly vacant house they own next door to their own. It’s an appealing offer, and Oyamada uses the couple’s economic anxieties as a way to keep the book grounded. Before the move, Asa and a friend discuss the specifics of the cost of getting a manicure, and she muses on the difference in compensation between permanent and temporary employees at her workplace. After the move, the couple has only one car, leaving Asa stranded when her husband goes to work: “Except for rush hour, the bus came only once every sixty minutes, and it was a forty-minute ride to the train.” One day, her mother-in-law asks Asa to run an errand for her—a simple task, involving a visit to a nearby 7-Eleven. But on the walk there, Asa encounters a bizarre mammal, which she compares to a raccoon, a weasel, and a dog. “Maybe it had hooves,” she adds. She follows it, then falls into a hole, where she meets a woman who refers to her as “the bride.” Throughout, Oyamada balances the surreal with the quotidian. Asa meets her husband’s long-lost brother, who she never knew existed and who's perennially shadowed by a group of bug-obsessed children who call him Sensei. Throughout the novel, Oyamada memorably conveys Asa’s dislocation. The prose frequently transforms everyday scenes into something menacing, too: “Deep in the grass, I caught glimpses of black shapes, moving quietly. It was the heads of children.”
Familial awkwardness and bizarre imagery take this story of unrest and disquiet to memorable places.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2887-9
Page Count: 112
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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