An endlessly immersive and at times awe-inspiring middle volume of a postmodern epic.
Rogers continues his lengthy account of a fictional journalist and her fictional island in his second literary novel in a trilogy, following Sailing to Noon (2023).
The island of Canuba lies in the Caribbean Sea, due south of Puerto Rico. Although it’s somewhat bigger than its more famous neighbor, the average reader might be forgiven for never having heard of it—indeed, one might think “there’s a worldwide conspiracy to keep Canuba off the map.” Long ruled by foreign powers and native autocrats, it’s most notable for “rum, baseball, sugar, beaches, and easy sex”; its own form of dance, the cambuca; and as the chosen home of Sicilian-born, Princeton University-educated journalist Chiara Trigona. The protagonist of Rogers’ previous novel, she appears in this one as the addressee of monologues by five people who loved her over the years. There’s the boisterous, ribald Lamia Metaxa, once Canuba’s premier cellist, as well as one of its most prolific lovers, who now, in the aftermath of a mental breakdown that ruined her career, recounts her years as Chiara’s closest friend and sometimes inamorata. There are the three Miranda brothers, the sons of a prominent diplomat: Virgilio, a world-renowned painter who pined after Chiara for years and who turned his own self-destruction into his artistic opus; Horacio, a sesquipedalian composer who rhapsodized Chiara in high literary style and eventually became a monk; and Catulo, a choreographer who had a fling with Chiara in college, although he was primarily interested in men. Then there’s Amado, Chiara’s plainspoken paramour whose death cast a shadow on the rest of her life—although it doesn’t prevent him from breaking into other people’s narration from time to time to say his piece.
Rogers’ novel takes the form of four long chapters, each of which moves backward in time by section toward the moment when the speaker first met Chiara. The time and place of the telling is somewhat mysterious—it turns out that Amado isn’t the only narrator who’s shuffled off this mortal coil—and each speaker is given to digressions about art, history, and politics with only a thin connection to their Sicilian muse. Even so, the author renders each voice with such specificity and vivacity that readers will be content to accompany them through whatever territory they wish. One section of Virgilio’s monologue takes the form of a 13-page poem, narrating Chiara’s trip after drinking a hallucinogenic tea; in another, Lamia’s synesthesia causes her to imagine her cello metamorphosing into a giant penis, mid-performance. The sharpest writing is often the most direct, as when Chiara gazes out at the ocean and says to Lamia, “I’m grateful to you for this sea. Yes, it’s a gift from you. I’m still in love with the fickle Caribbean, in all its varied moods. On sunny days like today, it’s a thousand tones of blue and green, from midnight to aquamarine.” Canuba may not be real, but in Rogers’ evocation of its history, its art, and its denizens, he captures something of the irrepressible invention and intoxication of Caribbean culture. An endlessly immersive and at times awe-inspiring middle volume of a postmodern epic.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781963908794
Page Count: 492
Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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