An extraordinarily beautiful depiction of an extraordinarily ugly—and wholly credible—world in the making.
A bleakly brilliant novel of a near future in which humankind has descended into unspeakable brutality.
Catalan poet Guasch makes his fiction debut with this elegantly lyrical view of a world torn apart by an unspecified catastrophe: a plague, perhaps, or climate change. Either way, people hide in dark rooms during the day as wolves descend from the hills, “striding among the houses.” The narrator has remained in his little sun-blasted village to take care of his mother, widowed after her husband’s desperate suicide. Resigned to the world’s terrors, Mom has taken up with a fascist beast whose “head is shaved, like all of them,” servant of a new regime emblematized by a mysterious place called the Factory. The narrator, meanwhile, yearns for his boyfriend, Boris, to whom he writes lovely, evocative letters: “I love you the way we love those who’ve left long ago,” he writes, “and those who haven’t yet arrived….” Boris has relocated to a distant city where life is perhaps a tiny bit better—or so the narrator finds after, in a moment worthy of Cormac McCarthy on the one hand, he dispatches his mother’s suitor and then, evoking Albert Camus on the other hand (“Mother died today. Or yesterday, maybe, I don’t know”), desultorily seeks a place to bury her after he reunites with Boris, a distant and often sullen young man who has his own priorities. Throw in a little Mad Max-ish chaos of roving gangs, and it’s amazing that anyone or anything can survive, not to mention the narrator’s love for Boris, which, he slyly notes, “dared not speak its name.” Intimations of other European modernists—Schnurre, Dürrenmatt, Cela—resound quietly throughout a text punctuated by museum-worthy photographs to stunning, memorable effect.
An extraordinarily beautiful depiction of an extraordinarily ugly—and wholly credible—world in the making.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780374612955
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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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