An earnest attempt to plumb the depths of Jewish ancestral memory.
A contemporary Jewish philosopher grapples with the meaning of the Holocaust in modern life.
Following a complaint from a troubled student, Jacob, a young philosophy professor, loses his job teaching a course on Jewish theology after the Holocaust and shortly thereafter learns that his wife has been having an affair. With his life in shambles, a chance encounter on the streets of New York City with Baer, a Holocaust survivor, leads him to Baer’s niece Rachel, a frustrated art historian and widow of an ultra-Orthodox Jew who died by suicide after she led him to follow his sister out of that community. The pair embark on a trip to an isolated estate on an island off the coast of Maine owned by Alex Baruch, a disgraced scholar who’s attempting to entice Jacob into supporting his Manhattan Kabbalah Center. They’re there ostensibly to attend an auction of a sketch illustrating a scene from the biblical story of Job that Baer claims was given to him by its creator and later stolen. At Baruch’s sanitarium they’re joined by a handful of others with personal or familial connections to the Holocaust, mirroring Jacob’s own link through his father, the child of survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and unable to shed his inherited trauma. Several times during the course of their stay, Jacob and some of the guests visit the titular tavern, a ramshackle establishment where wooden angels spring to life to deliver bad Borscht Belt standup comedy. Despite its sincerity and frequently evocative prose, the novel founders on an opaque narrative that forsakes chronology or any other intelligible structure and shifts abruptly between the perspectives of Jacob and Rachel, as it attempts to illuminate both the ordeal of Holocaust survivors and the struggles of the generations that followed them, all while exploring its main characters’ emotional turmoil. Inside this psychologically complex and seductive stew of provocative ideas is a profound story, but it can’t escape the oppressive weight of Collins’ high-concept approach to telling it.
An earnest attempt to plumb the depths of Jewish ancestral memory.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781938603525
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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
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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