A sensitive protagonist anchors this oddball bildungsroman.
A quirky young woman goes to college to find love and heartbreak in Richman’s coming-of-age novel.
Freya Rubenstein, a young girl from Cambridge, Massachusetts, struggles to make friends. She seems expressionless to some, strange and aloof, and she loses herself in whimsical fairy tales and Victorian novels. (In other words, she’s neurodivergent.) When she goes off to college in Washington state, at a hippie-dippy campus no “members of the Young Republicans had chosen” to attend, she learns to branch out and make new friends, falling in love in the process. Enter Caleb, a boy from Seattle who meets Freya in a freshman Humanities course. He’s taken by her direct approach to speech and her gentleness. The two become a couple, and soon they’re living together at Caleb’s mother’s home in Seattle. The curriculum at their college as well as Black Lives Matter protests quickly radicalize Caleb, and it’s unclear to what lengths he will go—and to what extent Freya will follow him—for justice. (Richman opens the novel in medias res with a scene of Freya wiring a bomb, leaving readers anxious to learn more.) Freya is a well-developed character, and her romance with Caleb, from a spur-of-the-moment trip to Vegas to the fallout of the summer protests, is both believable and fairy tale–like. The climax and denouement of the novel, rendered in sharp, poignant prose, are especially affecting. The narrative is charming but not without its issues—occasionally, the discussions of global politics and social justice feel shallow or didactic, and the novel itself begins to feel oddly conservative as it routinely paints the young idealogues as excessively extreme. The unevenness of the novel may actually add to its appeal; it is a story about a young woman finding her footing in college and in life, and if the book occasionally falters, so does Freya. It’s all the more honest for its flaws.
A sensitive protagonist anchors this oddball bildungsroman.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781578692156
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2025
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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