A well-guided journey along the boundary between faith and doubt.
A journalist struggles to uncover a mysterious sect’s secrets—and his own.
When magazine journalist Faruq Zaidi departs on an immersion project that takes him inside a religious group known only as “the nameless,” the committed atheist thinks he’s leaving behind his own emotional turmoil following the death of his father, a devout Muslim, a year earlier. Led by Odo, an aging but vital Black Vietnam War veteran, the collective operates from a highly developed base known as the Forbidden City in California’s redwood country. Following a set of principles known as the “18 Utterances,” its members get “hipped” and are urged to remove “distortion” from their lives as they espouse an enigmatic philosophy they say emphasizes “seeing beauty and making beauty,” while believing that “death is a beautiful thing too.” In alternating sections, Cuffy intersperses the story of Faruq’s effort to overcome the increasingly puzzling and ominous obstacles to penetrating the group’s essence with the script of a documentary about the nameless’ bitter, highly publicized clash with a fundamentalist Christian church at its founding site in a small Texas town and vivid scenes of Odo’s terrifying, disillusioning experience as a teenage foot soldier in the jungles of Vietnam. As Faruq’s projected six-week reporting assignment stretches into months, his questions about the nature of the nameless and its leader’s motivations and true beliefs only grow deeper. All the while, he wrestles with his own lack of faith, along with lingering grief over the sudden death of his mother when he was 12 and the way anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the 9/11 attack only a week afterward robbed him of the opportunity to mourn her passing properly. In exploring this corner of American religious life, Cuffy follows the recent work of Bret Anthony Johnston (We Burn Daylight, 2024) and Daniel Torday (The 12th Commandment, 2023) that dealt with religious cults, but she approaches the subject with a fresh, multifaceted perspective that makes it uniquely hers.
A well-guided journey along the boundary between faith and doubt.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593597446
Page Count: 464
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
