A sensitive story that’s admirably free of sentimentality.
In Elzinga’s novel, an ailing construction surveyor takes a job rife with complications and wrestles with loneliness and his looming mortality.
Forty-something Tom Bishop loves his job working as a surveyor for Midwest Stable Platforms, a company that builds the foundations for wind turbines, “those tall spindly brigades of white acrobats you’ve seen cartwheeling across the landscape of rural America.” Divorced for nearly 20 years—his marriage to Paige only lasted three—he finds solace in his “nomadic lifestyle,” traveling wherever the home office sends him, a lonesomeness that Elzinga renders unsentimentally but poignantly. His current job is in Pigeon Falls, a small, friendly village in Wisconsin that affords its visitors “absolute quiet” during its sleepy evenings. However, the client, Burnell Sandberg, is not peaceful; in fact, he’s a “a sad man with an appetite for creating conflict when none is necessary.” He wants the foundations for two turbines to be built before the freeze arrives—a very challenging task for Tom that isn’t made any easier by Burnell’s truculence. However, the compensation is excellent, and the hard work distracts Tom from anxieties about the pending results of some medical tests. He suffers from terrible abdominal pain and suspects they’re caused by something life-threatening—a terrifying prospect for a man without a family to offer him comfort. Meanwhile, a young restaurant server, Candace Cane, who reminds Tom of Paige, is being physically abused by her husband; one of Tom’s crewmates, Eddie, a hardworking teenager, begins a friendship with her that promises to bloom into more—a frightening and complex predicament, delicately conveyed by the author. There’s a moving strain of melancholy that runs through the entire book, especially in the tension between hope and resignation. The thoughtful Candace, who’s taking philosophy classes, tries to balance the two in her own understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche’s amor fati—one must learn to love one’s destiny, whatever it is. Overall, this is a deeply engrossing, if heartbreaking, tale that impressively refuses to succumb to melodrama.
A sensitive story that’s admirably free of sentimentality.Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781952526213
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Waters Edge Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2025
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
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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