A bittersweet selection of well-told L.A. stories, spanning gang lockups to movie-director mansions.
Harris’ story collection focuses on Los Angeles characters from all walks of life, shaken from their routines by startling chance encounters and unexpected relationships.
The author presents a collection of Los Angeles–centered short stories, typically involving a clash of personalities when characters come together (sometimes in a meaningful fashion, other times, well…). The title tale introduces Morris, a restless, middle-aged tax accountant who encounters Sofia, a rebellious teen from a privileged girls’ school, vandalizing luxury cars in retribution for climate change. Even though she considers him a class enemy, they somehow form a fragile bond (“Watching him leave, Sofia felt a hollow opening up inside her that she couldn’t explain. No other adults would let her speak to them the way she did to Morris”). Cary, the hard-luck protagonist of “The Cactus,” a washed-up athlete turned washed-up movie stuntman turned insurance man, finally meets his life mate in the person of an accident-case client, Sheila, who is particularly enchanted by an exotic flowering cactus he keeps. In “Doubles,” a divorced freelance writer and minor true-crime author is asked by a tennis partner for referrals on hoodlum types who can intervene in a sexual blackmail plot. Harris is not one for tidy endings in neat packages, leaving the reader hanging with tantalizing suggestions of what might happen next, as in “Mute,” in which a film director’s marriage disintegrates under the stress of raising an autistic child, or in “Chicken Soup,” with its battle of wills between an obstinate dowager and the undocumented Latinx woman hired as her caregiver. While the settings occasionally depict a Hollywood milieu of screenwriters, wannabe stars, and other creatives (the author is an established filmmaker), the material is not as arch as work by other chroniclers of Tinseltown, such as Bruce Wagner, Steve Martin, and Peter Lefcourt. Harris’ stories skew more broadly, recalling Raymond Carver’s and John Cheever’s vignettes of relatable people yearning for connection.
A bittersweet selection of well-told L.A. stories, spanning gang lockups to movie-director mansions.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781639889891
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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