Nostalgia and longing conveyed through abstract metaphors and interior dialogue.
Alharthi, winner of the Man Booker International Prize for Celestial Bodies (2019), uses a dreamlike, nonlinear structure to show how the complications faced by a young Omani woman studying abroad merge with her remorse-filled memories of her very traditional surrogate grandmother.
While Zuhour spends her days interacting with a coterie of international students at a university in a cold, unnamed English city, her nights are full of dreams concerning Bint Aamir, whom Zuhour calls grandmother although she was actually a distant relation. Brought into the family home by Zuhour’s real grandparents, Bint Aamir helped raise Zuhour’s father, Mansour, who was her great love, and then Zuhour and her siblings. Zuhour is haunted by regret that she never said a formal goodbye before she left Oman; Bint Aamir died soon after. Zuhour remembers Bint Aamir’s hard, lonely life—she was abandoned in childhood, permanently blinded in one eye, her one possibility of marriage thwarted, living in constant service to others without family, land, or possessions of her own—in bits of memory that merge with Zuhour’s own present life. So Zuhour’s description of Bint Aamir’s ruined eyesight slides into Zuhour’s own “still misty and blurred” sight. In talking about her own life, Zuhour is not a fully trustworthy narrator; her feelings toward Bint Aamir and the past she envisions for the dead woman reflect her own confused emotions surrounding her Pakistani friend Kuhl. Kuhl is passionately involved with fellow medical student Imran, although her wealthy, cosmopolitan parents would never approve of the match because Imran comes from a family of peasant farmers. Zuhour likes to think of herself bonded with Kuhl and Imran, but it is not a neat triangle. Attracted to Imran and perhaps to Kuhl as well, Zuhour remains shut outside their love for each other. The parallel of Zuhour’s and Bint Aamir’s lonely outsider status echoes through Zuhour’s never-ending dreams and thoughts.
Nostalgia and longing conveyed through abstract metaphors and interior dialogue.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64622-003-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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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