A luminous imagining of a great musician’s inner struggles.
On a transatlantic voyage, Gustav Mahler looks back on his turbulent life.
Frail and sickly, wrapped in blankets, the celebrated conductor-composer tries to warm himself on the deck of the ocean liner Amerika, bound for Europe. An attentive cabin boy brings him hot tea and tries to raise his spirits. It’s the spring of 1910, and Mahler—not yet 50, but nearing the end of his days—is brooding about the past. Physical infirmities have dogged him from the start; born in Bohemia, he was one of 14 children, six dying in infancy. Yet he worked tirelessly and achieved great acclaim, initially as director of the Vienna Opera, though politics and antisemitism clouded his tenure. Further success would come in the U.S., at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. All along, he was composing, often in feverish outbursts. Many of Mahler’s remembrances revolve around his obsessive love for his wife Alma, “the most beautiful woman in Vienna.” They had two daughters, but lost the older to diphtheria. Alma, eventually bristling in her role as Mahler’s caretaker, begins an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius—and Mahler concludes she’s stayed with her husband only because his death is imminent. Numerous biographers have scrutinized Mahler, but in this slender, fictionalized account, Austrian author Seethaler seems mostly interested in the composer’s emotional path and creative impulses: In one passage, he vividly describes Mahler patterning a composition on a bird call. The composer isn’t idealized here, his tyrannical side apparent in the mildly amusing scene where he reluctantly poses for the sculptor Rodin. The book does neglect Alma’s professional achievements (she was a well-regarded composer in her own right); and the ending, focused on the cabin boy, seems forced. But the lyrical prose throughout more than makes up for any narrative flaws.
A luminous imagining of a great musician’s inner struggles.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798889661801
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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