A compulsively readable university tale of identity and acceptance.
Vincent offers a novel of intergenerational drama at Harvard University.
As the story opens in 2008, Philadelphia-based Mark Levinson is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending his 35th class reunion at Harvard. At the festivities, he meets Becca Wyatt, with whom he'd once had a brief but passionate fling. Their own personal reunion is an uncomfortable one, and she leaves him with a mysterious package that dovetails with his own project to chronicle his family history: Despite family lore, it turns out there’s no record of Mark's grandfather Michael Levinson ever having attended Harvard in the early years of the 20th century. Thus unfolds the fascinating story of a bygone era at the university and a young man named Chauncey Bates Porter who wants more than anything to be a big man on campus and be accepted into exclusive groups—such as the Institute of 1770, which transformed into the famed Hasty Pudding Club in 1927. But as Mark’s research progresses, involving awkward interviews with elderly relatives who thought the past was dead and buried, he becomes increasingly aware of the fact that his grandfather, along with Porter, was hiding a whopper of a secret that might upend Mark’s own life nearly a century hence. Over the course of this novel, Vincent expertly balances the inquiries of his narrative’s present-day story with the urgencies of the Harvard of Michael’s time. The result is a stylish and surprisingly gripping family drama. “There always has to be an endpoint to historical research, and it always feels like the endpoint is arbitrary, because in fact, it usually is,” Mark is told at one point. “You can never learn the complete story.” Set against this intriguingly indeterminate backdrop, Vincent brings the old Harvard vividly alive, turning the story on the engaging machinations of a desperate, proud young man who says simply, “I did not want to be invisible. I did not want to be an outsider.”
A compulsively readable university tale of identity and acceptance.Pub Date: April 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780646876115
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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