A funny, tender, unexpected—though somewhat flimsy—bildungsroman.
Vi Liu, the daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, navigates relationships, identity, and her early 20s in this touching, absurd debut novel.
Reeling from the breakup of a two-year relationship with Luke Meyer, who gave her a “taste of what it felt like to be normal,” Vi is spiraling. She’s dropped out of college, missed the Peace Corps application deadline, and works at the front desk of a Holiday Inn–esque hotel. Her oft-flooding basement apartment, where she spends most of her time off, is grimy, strewn with dirty laundry and rotting leftovers. On a night out with her co-worker and her co-worker’s estranged high school friend, Vi discovers a blob next to the trash cans in the alley behind the bar. Drunk and panicking, both terrified and curious, Vi takes the blob home. Soon, to her confusion, she discovers that the blob is sentient; it breathes and eats. Increasingly, Vi realizes she can mold and shape the blob: She tells it to grow a hand, then a neck, and it does, growing into a body that looks like a handsome, generic-looking movie star. At first, Blob follows Vi’s commands, but as he becomes increasingly human, his desires shift accordingly; he feels trapped, and Vi’s plan to create her perfect boyfriend inevitably backfires. Interspersed with this comic story are vignettes of Vi’s troubled childhood—she was awkward, perpetually friendless, unlikable. These characteristics are supposed to explain why she is the way she is today: friendless, temperamental, quick to anger, a heavy drinker, sadistically self-deprecating. At times, these traits are humanizing and relatable, though they often feel too heavy-handed: “All the mistakes I made because I wanted to prove to myself what I never fully believed: that I belonged, that I was worthy.”
A funny, tender, unexpected—though somewhat flimsy—bildungsroman.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063358645
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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