This appealing family tale offers astute characterizations and a panoramic view of the 20th century.
A novel tracks a family through the first half of the 20th century, with all its good times and bad, focusing on the clan’s quotidian hopes and dreams.
The story begins when Belle Brand’s life intersects with Isaac Kaplow’s while she is watching Charles Lindbergh take off on his historic 1927 flight. Belle and Isaac marry during the depths of the Depression when life is hard, but they are deeply in love. They survive and begin to prosper. Soon come two daughters, Sophy and Vivie. Readers follow the family’s fortunes through the Depression and the decades after—with flashbacks to Isaac’s previous life in Europe. The story covers the World War II era, the 1950s, the ’60s, and so on (and the family’s move from Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island). And then the headlines: the Holocaust, the March on Washington, Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt, and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, each with its own shocks and moral reverberations. Through a peculiar happenstance, Belle and the artist Larry Rivers become edgy friends (he paints her portrait), and other luminaries—Frank O’Hara, Leonard Bernstein, Nell Blaine—make appearances. Then readers watch the daughters, the mostly dutiful Sophy and the beautiful, unpredictable Vivie, grow up and find themselves. Through it all, the Kaplows persevere. Silman is a much-published writer, sure in her craft and very insightful. Belle can be a worrywart, but Isaac is the rock, the mensch. Sophy and Vivie find not only themselves, but also good and caring husbands. This is, in fact, an old-fashioned novel, the sort of engaging book that readers can slip into like a warm bath, and the Kaplows are the kind of people the audience will remember long after the last chapter. Readers certainly don’t lack for stories of chaos and calamity, so the current, much abraded world needs this type of tale more than ever. In the last chapter, the author writes that love “is more than a madness; It is the protection against all that awaits us, our only defense against the hurts and truths of this uncertain, clamorous world.”
This appealing family tale offers astute characterizations and a panoramic view of the 20th century.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Campden Hill Books
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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