This debut collection brilliantly and hopefully contests the finality of any story.
Ten stories set mostly in contemporary Hawaii feature troubled family relationships and the hope of repair.
Rigg’s debut begins in “Target Island” with the detonation in 1948 of a 2,000-pound bomb on Kaho‘olawe. The shock hits a family living across the channel in Maui: a mother thrown against a stove, a father knocked unconscious, and a baby, Harrison, somehow escaping injury from the shattered glass in his crib. For Harrison, the aftershock becomes his life’s work as he strives to reclaim and clear Kaho‘olawe of bombs, ultimately for his granddaughter, whom he hopes “will bring her own children to this place, will point at the bomb-free earth and say, ‘Your great-grandpa did this.’” Throughout the collection, this hopefulness runs alongside the characters’ sorrow over estranged or failed relationships and the despoiled ecosystems of Hawaii. Characters recur, sometimes as the parent or child of another character, sometimes peripherally, and often unnamed, and the resolution of one story turns out to be provisional in light of events in another. The turbulent mother-and-daughter relationship portrayed in “(Partheno)genesis,” for example, is surprising given the father’s perspective in an earlier tale, and the breakup that devastates a main character of the title story is triggered by the offstage reunion of two characters who had been separated at the conclusion of another story. Among the standouts are the last two entries. In “Poachers,” a young woman worries about an unexpected pregnancy given that her own mother’s love is “a feeling so fragile that she sometimes, in its absence, wondered if it existed”; while helping her boyfriend’s mother poach flowers for sale, she finds another source of love for herself and the child she may have. In the title story, this child, now grown, and her father attempt to reconcile from a falling out with the help of unnamed spirits. These spirits proclaim that stories do not end, an insight that this collection, refracted through different perspectives over many generations, skillfully illuminates.
This debut collection brilliantly and hopefully contests the finality of any story.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780063419971
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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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