An often charming and funny coming-of-age tale.
Garvin (A Faithful Son, 2016) tells the story of a 13-year-old orphan sent to live with her forthright great-aunt in this novel.
When Poppy Wainwright’s grandmother dies, she travels from her home in Arkansas to live with her grandmother’s older sister, Sookie, in Savannah, Georgia. “Your Grandma Lainey was a self-righteous nit-wit,” Sookie tells Poppy upon their first meeting, “and if I had the gumption, I’d drive myself up to Mountain Home and spit on her freshly dug grave.” Sookie is everything Poppy’s grandmother was not: atheistic, slovenly, suspicious, prone to vendettas, and completely lacking any verbal filter. Yet there’s much that this foulmouthed, long-lived woman has to teach young Sookie about the world and how to be a woman in it. Sookie initially warns Poppy away from the locals—particularly the neighbor boys, with whom the old woman participates in an ongoing feud. Poppy manages to befriend Donita Pendergast, a young woman from church. As Poppy and Sookie become involved with Donita’s fraught relationship with her husband, Poppy learns some things about her own troubled family history from her great aunt—including some insight into how Sookie became so cynical. Following two women at either end of life, this novel is a fine submission in the long tradition of Southern bildungsromans. Garvin animates his characters with wonderfully vulgar dialogue, and he isn’t afraid to turn the reader’s stomach just a bit with his physical descriptions; for example, he makes sure to include the detail that “Yellow cataracts blanketed [Sookie’s] eyes, like two blue marbles coated by lemon custard.” The author also manages to tackle serious issues of sexuality and domestic violence while keeping the book lighthearted and highly readable. If he errs, it’s in his maximalism: the book feels bloated at more than 350 pages, in part due to the fact that he provides some pieces of information three or four times—usually, it seems, because he simply can’t decide which phrasing he likes best. Some readers may also find the tone too cute by half, but others who subscribe to Garvin’s larger-than-life vision won’t want it to end.
An often charming and funny coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: July 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5455-6872-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
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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