A tender and realistic cataloging of a relationship as it shifts, changes, and grows over time.
A young woman builds the life she thinks she wants over the course of a decade.
Stanley’s expansive sophomore novel follows one couple over the course of 10 years. On the verge of 30, Coralie Bower has recently relocated under duress from Australia to London. She works as a copywriter at a brand agency and harbors dreams of writing a novel. One morning at a cafe, she has an alarming yet charming meet-cute with Adam Whiteman, a political journalist, and his 4-year-old daughter, Zora. Adam, a divorcé, has a cordial relationship with his ex-wife, Marina Amin, and shares custody of Zora. Coralie and Adam’s chemistry—which is heavily rendered through playful banter—is immediate. Seemingly overnight, Coralie becomes a stepmother and moves into their family home, her life grafted onto theirs in ways she cannot quite see yet. The novel follows the couple’s relationship as they navigate home renovations, parental loss, unexpected career trajectories, parenthood, global turmoil, and complicated family dynamics. With the novel set between 2013 and 2023, politics weighs heavily on its plot—including a revolving door of British prime ministers and the Covid-19 pandemic. While Adam’s career catapults with every political scandal, Coralie struggles to manage her career, their shared home, and an overwhelming share of the childcare. The unending politics can feel exhausting at times, but also helps amplify Coralie’s feelings of claustrophobia, weariness, and anger. Stanley writes beautifully about the tension among wants, needs, and desires, especially in motherhood. When Marina gets pregnant, Coralie can admit her desire to be a mother: “The gap between having a baby and not having one yawned so large. Not having one: your longing made you silly, at the mercy of fate, a clichéd figure of fun, mockable.” However, when she becomes a mother, Coralie realizes she is both closer and further from herself in equal measure. This realization, which leads to the novel’s climax, offers Coralie the opportunity to find herself again.
A tender and realistic cataloging of a relationship as it shifts, changes, and grows over time.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9798217044993
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
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
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