An entertaining, deeply felt story of giddy hopes straining against harsh realities.
A down-in-the-dumps tour guide finds love while shepherding obstreperous clients across the Alps in McGregor’s mordant romance.
Depressed over his failing marriage, Joe Newhouse, a Munich-based expat American tour operator, books a gig conducting employees of the Portland video game company Luckspur on a meandering trip from Munich to Venice. The fractious group includes Rudy, the company’s domineering marketing chief; his secretary and girlfriend Sarah; their perpetually complaining coworker Felicity; and her kind, long-suffering husband Donald, the company’s lawyer. The one bright spot, from Joe’s perspective, is Tonia Gluck, the beautiful and charismatic wife of Luckspur’s owner Gerhard Gluck, who dropped out of the tour at the last minute. Joe drives the group south in his battered tour bus, stopping at off-beat hotels run by his hard-drinking cronies, the site of Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat in Berchtesgaden, and a performance of Cosi Fan Tutte in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg. The Luckspur employees complain about the callous, manipulative Gerhard and pick at each other over past antagonisms, but Joe’s disdain softens as he learns more about them. Joe and Tonia bond over art, poetry, and Ludwig II, the mad king of Bavaria; while touring his fairy-tale palace at Herrenchiemsee, Joe and Tonia begin a sexually adventurous affair. McGregor’s yarn features sharp-edged but complex characters who revel in European culture while approaching the open road as a pathway to liberation or a flight from responsibility. His smart, elegant prose sparkles as it evokes the tawdrier side of tourist glitz (“Worse still were the surly waitresses, their breasts popping out from worn-out dirndls, pretending they spoke only Bavarian while overcharging for beers”) but also conveys intense psychic extremes (“she threw her head back and laughed—a loud cackling laugh that made me think of hyenas on nature shows, their teeth reddened with entrails”). The result is a captivating exploration of the promise and burden of passionate love.
An entertaining, deeply felt story of giddy hopes straining against harsh realities.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781957024103
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Korza Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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