A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son’s love.
Buzbee’s novel presents a man’s loving homage to his father, as told in a series of impressionistic remembrances.
Robert Macoby grows up idolizing his father, Elwell, a tough but tender man who lived a remarkably dramatic life. Elwell spent time at an orphanage as a child—his parents struggled to afford the costs of child-raising—and there, he gained the tougher nickname “Mac,” which he earned by fighting off bullies. Mac’s father, a counterfeiter who spent time in prison, abandons the family when Mac is in seventh grade, forcing him to end his education and find work to support his mother and siblings. In 1936, at the age of 15, he joins the U.S. Navy and became a master diver, a remarkable accomplishment of which Robert is very proud. In 1964, when Robert is 7, Mac suffers his first heart attack, a massive one from which he never fully recovers. In 1970, he dies after his last cardiac event; this devastates his teenage son, who’d considered his dad his “best buddy.” Buzbee affectingly relates the heartache in Robert’s narration: “Was it the fatigue of your life, all that roaming, constantly, that ever roaming and uncertain youth of yours, followed then by the discipline and uniform boundaries of the Navy, the brass of that diving helmet, the pressures of the deep you swam through, the constant labor of welding and re-welding? Was it simply too much work for one life?” This fictional remembrance is structured as a scattered assemblage of vignettes, and these episodic portraits of Mac feel tenderly admiring without being hagiographic. The author’s writing style is generally informal, casually anecdotal, and intimately candid, and it has the effect of gently transforming the reader into Robert’s confidant. Buzbee achieves a complex amalgam of celebration and lament; his narrator adores his father and sees his “heroic life” as a model of manhood, but precisely because of this adoration, he experiences his dad’s loss as a catastrophe blow. Overall, it’s an admirably meditative exploration of the depths and travails of a father-son relationships.
A thoughtful and moving, but artfully unsentimental, depiction of a son’s love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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