An inspirational and sometimes-heartbreaking tale of two women’s resilience in the face of hardships.
Freed-Thall offers an intricate historical novel that touches on themes of intergenerational political rebellion and personal identity.
In 1958, 17-year-old writer Esther Garry moves into her 86-year-old great-aunt Sera Garry’s Greenwich Village apartment in New York City. A budding journalist, Esther asks Sera to recount her life story—a proposition to which the elder woman agrees, with the condition that Esther will write her own life story, too. Sera’s tale begins in 1881, when she was a young aspiring artist growing up in a Jewish family in Horodno, Russia. She watches as the nation enters a period of political unrest following the czar’s assassination, and Sera’s family is interrogated repeatedly by the Minister of State Security, Gen. Borishenko. In an art class, she meets artist and political rebel Meyer Levinson, and with his support, Sera takes action against Borishenko—an act that haunts her for the rest of her life. Esther’s story begins with her childhood in Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia, in the 1940s. After her mother and brother are killed in a car accident, her father quickly becomes engaged to Abigail, the clerk who took the family's obituary notices. Tensions rise when Abigail voices her support of racial segregation; Esther, who’s white, has a best friend, Sophie Johnson, who’s Black. Esther later begins to realize that she has romantic feelings for Sophie. Over the course of Freed-Thall’s novel, Sera and Esther’s alternating life stories effectively act as mirrors to each other, demonstrating that while the two women grew up in different times and places, their struggles are similar at heart. The narrative relies heavily on readers already having some familiarity with its settings and events, such as the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Still, the recounting of Esther and Sera’s pasts offers a moving reflection on the difficulties they faced, which were shared by millions of others.
An inspirational and sometimes-heartbreaking tale of two women’s resilience in the face of hardships.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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