A compelling coming-of-age story about personal loss and political awakening.
Music and tragedy move a young Jamaican woman in 1980s London to transform her life.
Music is a powerful force in Crooks’ incendiary debut novel, echoing the rhythms in the life of a young woman just beginning to find her voice. Set in the late 1970s and early ’80s, this is the story of Yamaye, who lives in a run-down housing complex with her Jamaican father outside London. Yamaye sleepwalks through her dull factory job, coming alive when she and her friends head to the Crypt, an underground club that thrives on darkness, sweat, and the driving beats of dub reggae. There are other spaces in which she feels safe—the local record shop, the Pentecostal church—but Yamaye is well aware that all such refuges are controlled by unyielding men. Though she dreams of making music herself, she's mostly content to dream and enjoy the escape dancing provides. Then one night she meets Moose, a thoughtful carpenter whose stories about his grandmother in Jamaica make her ache for the past and her own missing mother, who fled London when Yamaye was a child. Their romance blossoms, and Moose reveals possibilities she hadn’t considered. But love is not a shield, and when tragedy strikes, Yamaye is forced to confront the realities shaping her existence: racism, sexism, poverty, fear. Crooks creates unforgettable characters here, fleshed out with empathy and wisdom, and she writes in a lyrical style, expertly shaping Yamaye’s evolution from “Tombstone Estate gyal” to fierce, proud woman determined to liberate herself from perceived limitations and male aggression. “It always takes me time to realise someone’s hurting me,” she thinks. “A few minutes, a day, a year. Twenty-four years. Four hundred years.” Once awakened, however, Yamaye will be vigilant, dancing joyfully to her own beat.
A compelling coming-of-age story about personal loss and political awakening.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780593300534
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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