A parable for the social media age that critiques without resorting to alarmism or preachiness.
Scarred by a childhood and adolescence spent as the face of her stepmother’s social media empire, a London woman tries to protect her little sister from the same fate.
Aṅụrị Chinasa is not okay. While she runs two thriving businesses and, at 25, has enough money to afford a two-bedroom apartment in London, she struggles with alcoholism, likes to verbally abuse consenting men online, and is semi-estranged from her father, Nkem, and her stepmother, Ophelia. Enabled by Nkem, Ophelia, a famous blogger, made a name for herself on the back of her experiences raising Aṅụrị, sharing photos, videos, and anecdotes that won her millions of fans and lucrative sponsorships. For Aṅụrị, the material benefits of such fame and fortune couldn’t outweigh the social and emotional drawbacks—constant scrutiny, a lack of anonymity, even a kidnapping attempt—but Nkem and Ophelia didn’t see it that way. When Aṅụrị cut ties with the business at age 18, she was soon replaced by Nkem and Ophelia’s new baby, Noelle. Five years after Noelle’s birth, Aṅụrị, still suffering the ill effects of hypervisibility, sues Ophelia in an attempt to force her stepmother to expunge her social media accounts and commercial ventures of anything Aṅụrị-related. Roughly around the same time, the relentlessly momagered Noelle begins to exhibit worrisome behavior. Concerned for her sister’s welfare, Aṅụrị undertakes a new crusade against the backdrop of the ongoing lawsuit: to liberate Noelle from stardom. For all the righteousness of Aṅụrị’s cause, Nwabineli’s cleareyed narrator resists the temptation to wholly vilify Nkem and Ophelia; brief chapters told from their perspectives, coupled with the narrator’s occasional injections of background information, offer insight into why they made the mistakes they did. In many ways, this novel recalls Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000). Both novels foreground immigrants and immigrant struggles, including racism and xenophobia (Nkem and an infant Aṅụrị emigrated to England from Nigeria after Aṅụrị’s mother died; Ophelia’s contrasting whiteness is a subtle point of tension); both novels have the same sweeping third-person-omniscient point of view, peppered with wry observations about life and humanity. Though it isn’t a modern classic like White Teeth, this novel tells a moving, thought-provoking story that interrogates the toxic and parasocial dynamics associated with influencing.
A parable for the social media age that critiques without resorting to alarmism or preachiness.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9781525896033
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Graydon House
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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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