A sly and artful bildungsroman.
An adolescent tries to wrap his head around the source and meaning of his panic attacks.
The first novel by Clune is an autofiction inspired by his teenage anxiety. As the story opens, 15-year-old Nick’s parents have recently divorced and he’s living with his father in a spare apartment in the Chicago suburbs. He’s soon hyperaware of his unconscious bodily functions—breathing, blood flow—and is consumed by fear that they’ll shut down without his attention. For a time, his mind is warped by funhouse logic—maybe if he reads Ivanhoe without stopping, that’ll help?—until he gets a formal diagnosis. But the treatment (breathing into a paper bag) is embarrassing and unsatisfying, and soon he’s gathering with a new set of friends in a rural barn where he gets high, discovers sex, and contemplates the mythical roots of his affliction (i.e., the Greek god Pan of the book’s title). Plotwise, little happens in the novel, which covers roughly a year in his life, but Nick’s narration is intriguingly complex, capturing his desperation to keep his mind intact, while discovering that the quirkiness of his thinking is appealing to his newfound set of outcast peers. (“If you’re not like other people, it’s cool with us,” one tells him. “We don’t like other people.”) To that end, the digressions are sometimes more intriguing than the story, as Nick studies up on Oscar Wilde’s play Salome and he commiserates with a classmate on the finer points of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” Nick’s deadpan delivery, adolescent cohort, and cultural savvy evokes Brat Pack novels like Less Than Zero, and Clune’s book has similar shortcomings—an overly studied blankness, a lack of fullness of characterization. But as a mood piece, it offers a vivid sense of a boy all but asphyxiating on his own thoughts.
A sly and artful bildungsroman.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593834428
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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