Those who have the patience and receptivity required will be impressed and moved by this one-of-a-kind creation.
An account of a genocide written by a fictional character named Gittl, translated by a fictional character named Charles into a wildly Yiddishized and jabberwocked version of English.
The premise of Rothman-Zecher's experimental second novel is that there was a town called Zatelsk where all but two people were taken into the woods and shot in a single afternoon. One of the survivors was a boy named Leyb, the other a girl named Gittl who lost a large family of siblings. Both wind up in 1930s Philadelphia, where Leyb meets an urbane Black man named Charles in a gay bar. Charles introduces young Leyb to the ways of the world and becomes close to Gittl as well. Included in the story are accounts of meetings between Charles and Gittl to discuss the particulars of his translation of her “mayseh,” such as what words should be capitalized, and whether "Kuren Smerti" (list of the dead) can be "oversat" (an anglification of iberzetzen, Yiddish for translated) or should be left in the original Ukrainian. There's also quite a bit of passionate sex, communism, and a long section recording Gittl's burial prayers for each of her 296 murdered townspeople. (With so many children among them, this has a particularly powerful resonance in the summer of 2022.) Part of a sentence describing Gittl's life in the "beforemayseh" gives a sense of Rothman-Zecher's invented language: "Hendl was halfawakebecome with Gittl's upsitting, what served her almost right for the way she had murmured in her sleep nearly the whole night, as in almost every and each night, spooling and unspooling phantasmagoric psalms as the moon glimpted over the dustvillage, trying vainishly to plug its earholes, yoh, but it could not for it was as though the moon's hands, wrought from stretches of nightsky, were tightfastened under a blanket of darkness, its starsiblings murmursome and blithely snorish all around it, no bowing or prostrating soever, and this is a good kind of badfeeling, how it is to be pinned by one's siblings' snortbreathing and sleepspeaking...."
Those who have the patience and receptivity required will be impressed and moved by this one-of-a-kind creation.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-23166-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
