A satirical recipe that manages to turn sour, mismatched ingredients into something feather-light, affable, and sweet.
A perpetually put-upon English professor is drafted to chaperone a student trip to England, with predictably disastrous if comical results.
Schumacher’s previous chronicles about the perils of academia—Dear Committee Members (2014) and The Shakespeare Requirement (2018)—levy herculean challenges upon Jason Fitger, our beleaguered hero, which are off-putting in their injustice if often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Fortunately, she seems to be easing up on Payne University’s least-favorite son, even if his high-strung superciliousness and propensity for accidents remain unchanged. In this third installment, Fitger has been recruited (read: blackmailed) to lead a three-week “Experience: Abroad” to London and other iconic U.K. locations during a soggy January excursion. His absence from home thankfully leads to less fretting about his academic standing at the backwater Midwestern college where he chairs the English department. However, Fitger is typically anxious about his ex-wife Janet Matthias’ potential job with a university in Chicago and her looming absence from his life. There are plenty of new oddballs to fill the space, as Fitger’s charges are a wonderfully weird mix of exiles from the Island of Misfit Toys. Payne University’s dirty dozen include a mismatched and hot-tempered couple, a student disappointed to learn he’s not on his way to the Caribbean, and a pair of artistic twins reminiscent of The Shining. On the more extreme end, Fitger finds himself the target of a prelaw student whose major requires study abroad, “which has historically been about young white Americans losing their virginity and learning how to use the salad fork.” He also worries about the delicacy of a future cat lady; mentors a goth-y undergrad and a juvenile delinquent; and ponders the whereabouts of a student so absent he’s found his way to mainland Europe. Along the way, Schumacher continues the series’ epistolatory theme with student essays about experiences ranging from the consumption of a Scotch egg to equally unsavory field trips to Oxford, Stonehenge, and Bath.
A satirical recipe that manages to turn sour, mismatched ingredients into something feather-light, affable, and sweet.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780385550123
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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