A richly detailed evocation of a grim future that is, sadly, absolutely believable.
Roll over, George Orwell: This post-apocalyptic dystopia makes Airstrip One look like a summer camp.
Nayler’s sophomore novel is set in a familiar future world in which totalitarian orders rule, with recognizably Putinesque touches in what’s called the (né Russian) Federation, not least an autocratic ruler who’s been running the show for decades. One of his victims is an author named Zoya Alekseyevna Velikanova, exiled to the Siberian taiga after having lost an eye to the security police’s rubber bullets. “Just like in Byzantium,” she says matter-of-factly, recalling that once deposed, rulers were routinely blinded. Yet she can see well enough to sense what she thinks might be a ghost—and is, in a way, a dead woman walking: Lilia Vitalyevna Rybakova, who’s got revolution on her mind. The twist in Nayler’s neo-Orwellian world is that the rulers are now AI, part of a process called “rationalization,” and the AIs that run the (né European) Union are going haywire, raising energy prices to unaffordable levels and courting rebellion in the streets, including a Guy Fawkesian burning of Parliament: “Across Europe, power systems were failing. There had been massive data losses. No transport moved.” (We don’t hear much about the North American Union, but its tyrant has imposed a full communications quarantine: “They were intending to cut themselves off from the rest of the world.”) Lilia is in the thick of things, in trouble with the authorities everywhere but able to move around undetected, thanks to a gizmo that, she tells Zoya, “replaces you with what would be there if you were not.” All Nayler’s characters are well rounded, but the most interesting, apart from Lilia and Zoya, is the Russian bot-in-chief, Krotov—the power behind the president—who, with his algorithms constantly remade, seems destined to rule forever, forgetting, perhaps, that even Stalin couldn’t pull that off. And therein lies a twist…
A richly detailed evocation of a grim future that is, sadly, absolutely believable.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780374615369
Page Count: 336
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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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