Steeped in tragedy, but beautifully, memorably, and soulfully told.
Atmospheric, multigenerational novel that explores class lines, love, and death in modern India.
Jones’ novel opens with the recovery of a sunken statue off the Bombay coast in 1640. Representing Stella Maris, the Virgin Mary as celestial queen, it stands at the center of a small Catholic community, a legacy of the Portuguese. Jones moves swiftly into the modern era, beginning in the late 1970s with a distracted historian emeritus, Francis Almeida, now sagging into an unfulfilling retirement, lost in his archives while missing his children and grandchildren, who are scattered around the globe. Well into the narrative, as Jones carefully rounds out her characters, Almeida runs his bicycle into an 8-year-old girl, Celia D’Mello. Celia suffers a broken arm, but that’s less painful than the loss of one of the two shoes she has. Swept under the wing of the distracted professor and his loving wife, Celia becomes a familiar in the comfortable Almeida home, a sharp contrast to that of her impoverished but aspirational family. Time passes, and with it come changes: Celia grows up, marries, and suffers a string of calamities, one foreshadowed at the very start of the book. Meanwhile, Almeida suffers, a bit more each day, from dementia, vaguely recalling at first that Celia “was the village child who had once pitched into his bicycle—he could never remember the girl’s name,” eventually forgetting the names of his family. Jones writes with extraordinary empathy for her characters and their unhappy fates, peppering her prose with sharply observed aphorisms: “This was what the world did: press in on you with its bad-news this and so-sad that, snatch away what little time you had to see to your own affairs, fill your head with pictures you wished you’d never seen.” That’s just so, but her characters endure as best they can, and mostly with admirable dignity.
Steeped in tragedy, but beautifully, memorably, and soulfully told.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9781400042777
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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