Dedicated to delivering its liberatory messages, this purpose-built homage to 1960s television lacks humor and veracity.
The perfect 1950s family—they play themselves on television—crash-lands into the modern era one fateful day in March 1964.
For 12 years, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have played themselves on a CBS series called Meet the Newmans. As Niven’s adult fiction debut opens, it’s March 20, 1964, “the night the world as [Dinah] knew it ended.” Her husband, the creator, director, writer, and star of the series, has been in a serious car crash in a part of Los Angeles he had no known reason to visit. In the next section, a series of rather confusingly time-stamped vignettes and press clips from the day before sets the stage. The show has received a devastating review from a prominent TV critic, threatening its prospects for renewal by the network; one sponsor has already dropped out. Meanwhile, Dinah is fed up with her life, and she’s experiencing physical symptoms of numbness; 17-year-old rock idol Shep has gotten one of his many female admirers pregnant; 22-year-old Guy has secretly dropped out of law school and is having a closeted gay relationship with one of his entourage. Yet the media continues to pump out PR-driven fluff on America’s Favorite Family. With Del now in a (secret) coma, the rest of the family must rally to complete the last two episodes of the season. A stunningly clunky series of developments makes Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique the deus ex machina of transformation for Dinah and a young journalist named Juliet Dunne, who becomes her collaborator. Downtrodden and trivialized at the Los Angeles Times, Juliet is so far best known for tabloid coverage of her relationship with a famous bad-boy musician. She and Dinah write a final episode that will drop-kick the Newmans out of their old-timey rut, with a hilariously hokey women’s consciousness-raising session convened along the way to help them hone their script.
Dedicated to delivering its liberatory messages, this purpose-built homage to 1960s television lacks humor and veracity.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250372444
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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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