With a plot as thick as gesso, Binet’s latest takes inventive twists to arrive at a satisfying conclusion.
An epistolary novel of art, intrigue, and homicide in Renaissance Italy.
French novelist Binet opens with a familiar trope, declaring that he’s stumbled upon a cache of letters from 1557 and 1558 that “form a tale so compelling that [he] stayed up all night devouring them.” The first letter, from teenage Maria de’ Medici to her aunt, the queen of France, offhandedly announces a mystery: The painter Jacopo da Pontormo is dead, according to her by his own hand. “What a drag!,” she exclaims in an anachronistic turn of phrase when moving on to her real subject, her father’s plan to marry her off. The courtier Giorgio Vasari, writing to Michelangelo at his Roman place of exile, has different news: Pontormo’s body was discovered “with a chisel embedded in his heart,” and with his head bashed in as well. Vasari ventures a theory, Michelangelo counters with another, and other interlocutors, such as Agnolo Bronzino and Cosimo I, the duke of Florence, have their own ideas: Pontormo was killed by an offended beau because he superimposed Maria’s face on a nude Venus; he was done in by zealous nuns who were followers of Savonarola and who, when interrogated, called all painters “degenerate sodomites with bestial morals”; one of Pontormo’s apprentices has killed his notoriously irascible master; and so forth. Vasari, a slippery fellow, turns out to have cat burglar skills as well as a nose for police work, announcing in the language of a modern procedural his conclusion that one suspect “brought together the three elements necessary for a guilty verdict: motive, means, and opportunity.” It’s no Name of the Rose, but Binet’s yarn has plenty of entertaining moments as the would-be detectives rule out suspects and hone in on their quarry.
With a plot as thick as gesso, Binet’s latest takes inventive twists to arrive at a satisfying conclusion.Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780374614607
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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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