A brilliantly rendered novel raises crucial questions about identity, justice, war, and belonging.
The love affair between a Canadian grad student and an Israeli soldier grows increasingly complicated.
Sacks’ latest novel begins with a deceptively simple premise: A young woman falls passionately in love with an even younger man. Allison is a grad student visiting Israel from Canada; Eyal is on the verge of invading Gaza. She’s 27; he’s 19. At first, the story seems basic to the point of cliché. But Sacks quickly veers into territory much more troubling and complex. Just as Eyal is beginning to question the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza—and, by extension, his own—Allison is learning to silence her own questions. “I was finding that I liked myself better in Hebrew,” she tells us, “a language in which I had so much less to say.” Allison’s family, we learn, isn’t close—she and her sister have grown apart, and her parents are distant. In Israel, on the other hand, she finds herself fully embraced by both Eyal’s family and the country at large: “Nothing in my whole life had ever felt as good as being welcomed not just into a family but into a people,” she says. What’s most disturbing in this brilliantly rendered book is not the age difference between the lovers, not the war, but the way that Allison gradually learns to manipulate her own thoughts. “I could say to myself, ‘That was racist’; saying Death to Arabs is racist—but also,” she thinks, “I understood the feelings behind the words.” Desperate to belong, Allison engages in increasingly pliable mental gymnastics to justify her thoughts and actions. Sacks’ depiction of those mental gymnastics is astounding. Sometimes, it’s true, Sacks can be heavy-handed, repeating explicitly what is already implicitly clear. But this is a minor complaint. As a whole, the book—and Allison’s transformation—is deeply unsettling, and Sacks’ talent as a novelist who takes on thorny, multifaceted, unanswerable questions is clearly unmatched.
A brilliantly rendered novel raises crucial questions about identity, justice, war, and belonging.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780063284234
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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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