An unsettling and melancholy dreamscape that leans more on aesthetics than on plot.
A young woman goes to work as a housekeeper at a hotel that remains curiously without guests in this disquieting and elegiac novel from a Swedish writer.
Rafaela, the first-person narrator, grew up near the sea, and she never dreamed of taking a job in the mountain town of Strega, but after her mother comes across the Olympic Hotel's want ad for "nine maids for the winter season," she applies for a position out of a sense of duty. She soon finds herself in the beautiful and desolate hotel—alone except for her fellow seasonal hires and three members of the permanent staff. The new girls are rigorously trained in hospitality and hotel upkeep and given strange lectures on servile womanhood, electricity, and the nuns living at a nearby convent, but days and then weeks go by without anyone ever renting a room. Lykke Holm builds a sense of aimless unease as the housekeepers inure themselves to days of seemingly senseless work and harsh punishment from their managers, and Rafaela falls into a homoerotic friendship with a fellow maid. Right as the tension begins to tilt toward tediousness, a local holiday brings strangers to the Olympic for a party, and one of the maids disappears. The search for Cassie and grief over her disappearance form an interesting engine for the latter half of the book—as do Rafaela’s musings on women’s bodies as inevitable crime scenes—but the persistent ambiguity about what is and isn’t real occasionally feels like indecisiveness on the part of the author and prevents it from satisfying as a mystery. Lykke Holm’s prose—full of litanies of strange and striking imagery—is, without a doubt, the book's greatest strength.
An unsettling and melancholy dreamscape that leans more on aesthetics than on plot.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-53967-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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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