An engaging read from start to finish.
A young Icelandic man chooses between his home and the wider world.
Orri attends the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, but he’s an unfocused and lackluster student, so he finagles permission to take three weeks off from his studies to help his father on the family’s farm. It’s hard work in a land of plenty: plenty of rain, sleet, snow, and ice. Plenty of muck and mud and bitter cold. Plenty of freezing livestock and cows shitting in their water troughs. Not plenty of topsoil to raise crops on the rocky ground. Orri enjoys the work, but his father, his Pabbi, is a frustrated man who “experienced life as a slow leak.” Mamma is a first-generation Jewish immigrant and a professor at Bifröst University who doesn’t want the farm life. Meanwhile, Orri meets women online. He has no romantic chances with Rúna, a lesbian who speculates about Orri being her public beard. And he spends countless cyber hours chatting with Amihan Cruz, a woman of Philippine descent: “There is much for good friends to catch up on when they’ve only just met.” So, the characters all have different interests that may or may not blend together. Does Orri really want to quit university and follow in Pabbi’s footsteps? “Because who in their right mind—I’m looking at you, Vikings—would take their first steps onto our steaming black rock and think farmland?” That Orri thinks so is evident from the prologue, so it’s no spoiler. He’s a thoughtful and expressive narrator, who refers to “moments you know you’ll recall in perfect clarity forever, seared across the neurons like a psychic tattoo.” Some of those vivid moments are ankle-deep in muck, and some are of animal slaughter, because “a real working farm isn’t a tourist attraction.” But many more are of friendships, family, and the land itself. This is Miller’s second novel of the far north, following The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (2021), and he clearly knows his subject.
An engaging read from start to finish.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780316575140
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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