Fernández is emerging as a major voice in South American letters, and this slender but rich story shows why.
Chilean actor and novelist Fernández continues her project of lifting the veil on the dark years of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
As in Fernández’s previous novel, Space Invaders (2019)—note the two pop-culture titles—the story moves about in great leaps from decade to decade. It opens in 1984, when a man enters the Santiago office of a magazine and asks to speak to the author of a story that centers on him. “Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, Soldier First Class, ID #39432, district of La Ligua,” wants to speak about what he has done on behalf of the regime, “about making people disappear.” He has a dossier running page after page, giving names, recounting how they were tortured, his victims now denizens of “some parallel reality” that suggests to the narrator an extended episode of the old creature-feature series The Twilight Zone. A quarter-century passes, and now the narrator encounters the killer again, this time as she is writing a television series about the era, one of the characters based on him. He recounts watching the protest marches by the mothers of los desaparecidos, who hoist poster-sized photographs of their loved ones: “They don’t realize that I know where that person is,” he says, “I know what happened to him.” Enumerating the victims is a process that absorbs both characters, moving between past and present, when the state-sponsored murderer escapes to rural France: “Will he be able to change the shadows of things to come? He wants to believe he will, that he has the right to a change of skin.” Fernández’s story has shades of the cat-and-mouse mystery, her touchstones emblems of mass global culture: episodes of The Twilight Zone, to be sure, but also old movies and, of course, the video games of the era: “On the same television screen where we used to play Space Invaders, we now saw the national police agents responsible for the murders.”
Fernández is emerging as a major voice in South American letters, and this slender but rich story shows why.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64445-047-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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
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