Character-driven speculative fiction with strong worldbuilding and fine writing.
Three queer sisters, one dead father, and a fraught inheritance in a flooded city at the end of the world.
“People think it’s just hellfire and brimstone, four horseman and out, but actually the end times go on and on and on,” remarks Irene Carmichael with regard to the Book of Revelation, and Armfield’s third novel seems to have taken a leaf from it, though she and her quarrelsome sisters also have a foot in King Lear. Isla, Irene, and their half sister, Agnes, are the daughters of famous, and famously nasty, architect Stephen Carmichael, known for daring structures custom-built for the partially underwater environment. As the novel opens, he has died, and the estranged sisters have reluctantly gathered to figure out how they can get to the hospital to view his body. With most modes of transport washed out, unreliable ferries that depart from randomly placed jetties are the main way to get around. While the three women have difficult personalities on their own, their father exacerbated their troubles both during his life and after his death with disbursements and bequeathals structured to pit them against each other. Meanwhile, Isla, a therapist, continues to see patients, though her wife has left her to explore communities outside the city. Irene has lost heart for her advanced studies in Christian theology, but her partner, Jude, keeps an even keel, cooking pasta dinners and “focusing solely on what’s going on right in front of them, as if everything else is irrelevant and incapable of causing them harm.” Agnes, a cranky barista, makes cappuccinos and writes the wrong names on them on purpose. Armfield garnered lots of love from literary horror fans with her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea (2022): These readers will surely relish her impressive post-climate-catastrophe vision (horror tropes included). For some readers, however, the unhappy sisters and their ruined planet will be oppressive. When at one point a peripheral character develops a penchant for “miserabilist literature,” one thinks of recommending the very book he appears in.
Character-driven speculative fiction with strong worldbuilding and fine writing.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781250344311
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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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