A stirring collection of linked tales with a deep sense of place.
A volume of short stories revolves around a prominent family in a Kentucky college town.
The Collins girls have had it rough. Meredith’s husband, long-suffering from bipolar disorder, died in a car accident and left her with three daughters, ages 12, 8, and 5. The oldest, Diana, has always been the responsible one; Cecily is the one everyone worries about; the youngest, Molly, is the child who loves horses. Radiating out from these girls is a network that threads through Bowling Green, Kentucky, a city known for its deep subterranean caves. Indeed, caves are everywhere in these tales. Meredith is a geologist and caver. Her deceased husband, David, was a professor who had his students act out Plato’s The Allegory of the Cavein class. In the title story, which features Cecily reading letters sent to her by her family during a stint in rehab, she instructs her mother to “think of me as a mammoth cave. Your letters just flutter through the stale air, talk echoes, memories suffocate.” Some of the tales in this linked collection focus on one or more of the Collins girls at various times in their lives while others follow characters from outside the family. There’s the woman who babysits them when they are young, a perennial student who writes a short story based on things she read in Meredith’s diary. There’s the girls’ uncle, a solitary hunter who can’t quite figure out what to do with himself when he isn’t in the woods. One story is narrated by Molly’s classmate at Western Kentucky University who struggles to navigate the campus—physically and socially—in her wheelchair. Another follows Cecily’s old boyfriend, now a third-grade teacher, taking his class on a field trip to a cave and meditating on the past. Like spelunkers stumbling through a cave system, readers never know what new chamber they might end up in, only that it connects, somehow, back to the entrance.
Olmsted’s painterly prose evokes both the Kentucky landscape and the personalities who reside in it. Here the Collins girls’ uncle spots a rare flock of swans in the sky: “I hear them before I see the swans flying overhead. Trees are so thick, I glimpse only the right leg of the V. Put them on water and they’re self-interested honkers, but when they fly, their wings beat together like it’s one massive body sailing over.” The author has a talent for establishing characters and dynamics quickly, immersing readers in the interpersonal dramas that populate these pages: between siblings, between generations, between romantic partners, and between strangers. She also succeeds at incorporating a sense of local history into the work. Where weaknesses exist, they are mostly inherent in the structure. Not all of the stories really work on their own—readers will always be looking for ways new characters connect to the Collinses—and the book lacks the satisfying narrative arc or the deep character study of a novel. Even so, scene by scene, this volume makes for an engaging and sometimes moving group portrait.
A stirring collection of linked tales with a deep sense of place.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 202
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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