A slightly monotonous novel set at a blood-centric spa.
In Camponeschi’s debut novel, a lost young man finds community at a remote health institute.
Twenty-three-year-old Will Moretti has just lost his best friend, Rich, to suicide. Rich had suffered from juvenile diabetes, and while Will is sifting through Rich’s things, he discovers a brochure for a New Age health camp in Arizona that Rich’s parents had been encouraging him to attend. Will decides to travel to the camp himself—he’s been in a rut since college ended, and he’s hoping to find some closure regarding Rich’s death. He takes a job as an assistant chef in the camp’s kitchen while simultaneously taking classes and even joining the camp’s lacrosse team. Despite the summer camp atmosphere, the teaching all revolves, curiously, around blood. “Blood is a magical substance that has appeared throughout human history as a sacred religious symbol,” explains Will’s instructor, Juan. “It supplies the fuel you need to survive, and as I’m sure you’re well aware, the loss of too much blood means our bodies cannot survive.” Does blood really hold the secret, not only to good health but to spiritual fulfillment? Surrounded by an assortment of colorful oddballs—and several women who get his blood pumping in different ways—Will is about to find out. Camponeschi’s clean prose carries the reader through Will’s journey as a chef, seeker, and newly self-identifying Type O bearer: “His rising curiosity about what lay ahead had helped him overcome his aversion to being poked with a needle. As the nurse rubbed his left arm with alcohol, he turned his head and winced when she inserted the syringe.” The narrative is not especially plot-heavy, nor does it take the sinister direction that the reader may be expecting. Instead, the author offers a sincere and sometimes didactic exploration of grief, growth, and blood-forward theories of health. While sometimes intriguing, the story’s emotional basis is too thin to sustain the nearly 500-page length.
A slightly monotonous novel set at a blood-centric spa.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2022
ISBN: 9798405606729
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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