A weak romance but an interesting family drama.
After a heartbreak, a woman visits family in Indiana to reevaluate her life and maybe even find new love.
Wren’s fiance has fallen in love with someone else and breaks up with her mere months before the wedding. Their English village, once quaint and comfortable, is now much too small for the both of them. On her mother’s suggestion, Wren decides to fly out and spend the summer with her father, stepmother, and newly married half sister on their Indiana farm. Things are slightly tense, as Wren has never been completely at ease with her father since he left her and her mother for this new family when she was young, but maybe time together will begin to strengthen a weak connection. She also keeps running into Anders, the younger son of the farm next door, who’s visiting from Indianapolis and still reeling from losing his wife four years earlier. The two are drawn to each other despite both of their hesitations, but a secret Anders is keeping threatens their newfound affection. Toon has constructed a very cozy, lived-in world of Indiana farms that's comforting both for Wren and the reader. The tangled web of relations in Wren’s family and her journey to begin to heal some of the wounds of her childhood are the strongest parts of the novel, messy but real. Wren and Anders’ relationship is a bit rushed; it feels more superficial when juxtaposed against Wren’s complicated, realistic family relationships. Some plot threads go nowhere, and others appear out of thin air. Anders’ big secret doesn’t come into the story until two-thirds of the way through, complicating things but without much time for characters to explore or truly reflect on it.
A weak romance but an interesting family drama.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593544334
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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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