Sympathetic storytelling leavened with humor.
A Jamaican girl seeks happiness and her place in the world, one baked good at a time.
Pumkin Patterson’s story starts when she’s 11, a bright student and the apple of her Auntie Sophie’s eye. Sophie lives with her half-sister—the resentful Paulette—Pumkin, and Pumkin’s beloved grandmother. Sophie and Paulette have a volatile relationship, impaired by Paulette’s belief that her mother favors the lighter-skinned and status-conscious Sophie. Sophie and Pumkin dream of escaping their deteriorated home in a disadvantaged Kingston neighborhood to live in France. When Sophie eventually goes to France, she promises to send for Pumkin as soon as she establishes herself. Pumkin is left with her neglectful and intermittently violent mother—the death of her grandmother and the reappearance of her repulsively reptilian father don’t help matters. The girl’s chance to move to France and attend school there depends on her ability to pass a French-language proficiency exam, but her efforts to accomplish this are thwarted by Paulette at every opportunity. Pumkin’s talents for entrepreneurship and baking serve her in good stead as she develops a devoted clientele in the neighborhood and at school. Her hard-won confectionary earnings might allow for test prep and registration for the all-important exam as well as a crucial measure of independence. Debut novelist Robinson explores themes of class rivalry, racism, postcolonial damage, and self-determination…all through the eyes and ears of a teenage baking wizard as the adults who cross Pumkin’s path articulate personal grievances or explanations of the status quo in Pumkin’s corner of Jamaica. This coming-of-age story employs extensive dialogue in Jamaican dialect, a sincere tone, and a young person’s perspective on class differences within a relatively small community (which may appeal to younger readers in search of their own escape plans).
Sympathetic storytelling leavened with humor.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780063334878
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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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