A fierce examination of the unexamined life.
A man returns to his childhood home to bring the life he left behind there to its conclusion, in this translation of a 1973 novel from a celebrated Portuguese novelist.
When Mateus Silva was last in the seaside town where he grew up it was 25 years earlier and he was still a boy called Matinho. Though his father and mother both died 10 years earlier, leaving him the sole proprietor of his crumbling childhood home, Mateus has never tried to sell or rent the property out of a sense that “this detail saved everything else from being a total disaster… [having] a little patch of land that was all his in this big, wide world.” Now, however, he has a pressing reason to sell. Mateus’ longtime girlfriend, Alberta, is dying, and Mateus will use the proceeds from the sale of the house to send her to the Acropolis, a place she has dreamed of visiting since childhood. With this pressing deadline looming, Mateus is content to sell to the first bidder—his former neighbor, Senhor Osório—though doing so brings back the tumultuous childhood memories that sent Mateus and his mother running to Lisbon in the first place. Osório’s wife, Graça, occupies an outsize place in Mateus’ memory. Neither “skinny and anxious like his mother, nor internally serene and protective like Alberta,” Graça’s “vital” beauty proved irresistible both to the boyish Matinho that Mateus once was, and to his father, whose public affair with Graça is what originally fractured the family. By selling the house, Mateus has the opportunity to leave the past behind, but the re-emergence of the much denuded Graça in his life, along with his introduction to her chaotic, sensualist daughter, Natália, and Alberta’s steady, phlegmatic decline forces Mateus to confront the fact that the past may be the only time in his life that still feels worth living. Through prose that is both melancholy and brutally keen, this midcentury master’s eye for the scintillating detail at the heart of even the most mundane observation loses nothing in its translation from its original language, culture, or time.
A fierce examination of the unexamined life.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641820
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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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