A promising debut of interest to students of modern French literature.
Crime and punishment in 1950s Algeria.
Fernand Iveton would never dream of harming a fellow member of the working class. Alas, in an act of sabotage gone awry, he has, though, and he’s been arrested for his troubles. It’s no ordinary arrest, for Fernand, though European, is a prominent figure in the movement to free Algeria from French rule. “Where’s the bomb, you son of a bitch?” an interrogator shouts before punching him so hard that “his jaw makes a faint cracking sound.” Worse is yet to come for him and some of his comrades. Iveton, a real figure executed in 1957, emerges in Andras’ novel as a rough-edged but principled revolutionary, one who “may not have read Marx like the party leaders” but whose commitment to an independent Algeria of “Arabs, Berbers, Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Maltese, French, Germans…” is very real. Fernand doesn’t budge in this commitment in Andras’ slender narrative, and neither does his faithful wife, a Polish immigrant he met in France. Andras’ scenes move back and forth in time and space from Paris and the French countryside to Algiers—in the latter, mostly a dusty prison yard where nothing much happens even as, beyond the walls, French labor unions and leftist politicians agitate for Fernand’s release. Their efforts are in vain: The verdict of guilty “falls like the blade that is now promised to him,” a verdict that Hélène and Fernand accept with grim stoicism. As Andras writes in the afterword to his book, which won the Prix Goncourt for a first novel, the case of Iveton was once so well known that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a memorial essay about him in Les Temps modernes, and, it’s said, Albert Camus tried to plead for his freedom. It is almost forgotten today, and though mostly affectless in tone, Andras’ novel revives a lost moment in history, neatly bookending Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation.
A promising debut of interest to students of modern French literature.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78873-871-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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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