A socially conscious novel of art and ideas.
Three girls walk into a bedroom in the New Jersey suburbs in 1983...and many decades later, into a dystopian future.
Soon-to-be seventh graders Giselle Chin and Jackie Ong are hiding from a Fourth of July party, making prank calls in the host’s bedroom, when Ellen Ng walks in and asks if there’s anything else to do for fun around here. The three wander across the street into a parallel gathering and help themselves to someone else’s hamburgers. “This was the beginning, what Giselle would describe, years later...as...the SEEDS of our aesthetics...we saw each other for who we were // masked weirdos, undercover pranksters.” This ominously pretentious-sounding observation appears in one of the year-long conceptual artworks Giselle eventually becomes famous for: Mall Piece, 1995-96; Memory Piece, 1996-97; and Death Piece, 1999-2000. Meanwhile, Jackie grows up to be a visionary software developer, creating a site where people keep online diaries for public consumption and taking part in New York City’s Silicon Alley dot-com boom. Ellen continues her rabble-rousing ways, publishing a zine and then establishing a squat on the Lower East Side. Though they lose track of each other from time to time, the three come to realize that “friendships were circular, that you could never fully lose touch.” After moving their stories across the bridge to the new millennium, the narrative leaps ahead to the 2040s, where the political situation has become a nightmare, though not a particularly intriguing one, and supporting characters proliferate while ones we care about fade from view. Though full of interesting action and sharp observation, Ko’s follow-up to The Leavers (2017) fails to whip up much narrative tension beyond the mystery created by the photographs that appear from time to time, captioned with complicated archival labels. In the end, the book’s elaborate conceptual structure dominates the characters who inhabit it.
A socially conscious novel of art and ideas.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780593542101
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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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