A striking novel of a changing New York City.
A young girl gets married in an attempt to secure her freedom from domestic drudgery in Rubin’s prequel to In the Hands of Women (2023), set in the late 19th century.
In 1879, Tillie Isaacson is growing up on her father’s chicken farm in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood; she’s the daughter of Sam and Sarah Isaacson, Jewish people who emigrated from antisemitic Germany. Tillie is brimming with intellectual curiosity and academic ambition, and her mother encourages her to pursue lofty aspirations. But her life changes drastically when Sarah suddenly dies and Sam marries Rebecca,who wants Tillie to abandon her dreams of attending high school to help her run the household. Also, as farmland dwindles in Manhattan, Sam moves the family to Sullivan County, north of the city—the beginning of the end of their way of life, which author Rubin elegiacally portrays. As Sam melancholically puts it, “Our farming world’s shrinking fast.” Tillie figures she can stay in Manhattan and attend school if she finds a husband, so she marries Abe Levine, an enterprising businessman who sells buttons to dressmakers. Her strategy backfires, however, since her home is prohibitively far from the high school, and the arrival of children brings precisely the domestic burdens she wanted to avoid. She comes to find the city a “vile place,” rife with squalor and filled with people who feel “faceless, empty of hope, full of desperation.” Over the course of this novel, Rubin thoughtfully chronicles Tillie’s indefatigable efforts to make her life livable, first by becoming a teacher of English, and then a devoted mother and successful businesswoman. The best aspect of this novel is the tableau it paints of New York City at the turn of the century: infinitely expanding and modernizing, while also overwhelmed by bigotry and misogyny. Readers will find the author’s prose to be unembellished and largely bland. Nonetheless, the plot is dramatically powerful, and Tillie is a memorably dauntless protagonist.
A striking novel of a changing New York City.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781685125813
Page Count: 358
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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