Some of the earlier and lesser stories are merely diverting, but the longer and later ones are devastating.
A collection of stories featuring female narrators amid the turbulence and upheavals of mid-20th-century Japan.
Though Dazai often drew from his own life in his novels—a life marked by alcoholism, drug addiction, and time in a mental institution—both the voice and perspective are different here. In every story, the first-person protagonist is a young woman, generally in her early-to-mid-20s. Or younger, as in the day-in-the-life of “Schoolgirl,” one of the longest and best pieces. Proceeding chronologically, the stories cover an expanse from the late 1930s to the late ’40s. Early on, the narrators struggle with the constraints of gender and class, or how the male author believes his female characters felt about such issues. (It can be difficult to tell whether some of the disgust expressed by his self-lacerating narrators represent their own or the author’s attitude toward being female.) The pivot arrives with “December 8,” a slice of Japanese life from the day after Pearl Harbor, when the everydayness seems pretty much the same as it did before. From here, it won’t, as all hell breaks loose in the subsequent stories. Amid the bombing of houses, the disappearance of spouses, and the disintegration of familial relations, conventional morality pretty much collapses. There are no happy endings or glimmers of hope. In “Osan” (1947), a young wife tries to hold her home and family together as she suspects that her husband has embarked on an affair that brings him no happiness. It ends with the narrator lamenting, “I can’t stop trembling—not with sorrow or anger so much as disgust with the absolute idiocy of it all.” The author died by drowning in 1948 at the age of 38, seemingly in a double suicide with the lover for whom he had abandoned his own family.
Some of the earlier and lesser stories are merely diverting, but the longer and later ones are devastating.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780811239332
Page Count: 256
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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