Ambitious, inventive, and aggressively repellent.
The author of the story collection Reptile House (2015) explores human vengeance and deep time in her first novel.
“Once, here, on this high plain, there were only Horse, Bear, Rhino. No words to put to things, no call to put them. But today? Ginny and Dan in the barn, and words like this: ‘You fucked me over. You fuckin’ fucked me over.’ " Ginny and Dan are trying to help a mare give birth to a foal that’s too big for her while they argue about the fact that Ginny has been unfaithful to Dan. The opening passage begins with an observation that encompasses the vast sweep of life on this planet and then zooms in on a contemporary scene that’s obscene, filthy, and brutal. This is a pretty good preview of what’s to come. Ginny and Dan will take increasingly elaborate measures to help their horse survive giving birth. Their community assembles to help them. The gathering turns into a party, and any sense that this is mutual aid—rather than the desire to treat suffering as entertainment—quickly dissipates. Rescuing a mare in distress is simply the excuse that brings together people eager to punish a woman who has transgressed. While it would be a mistake to call this novel a Western, it most definitely engages with ideas about the American West. McLean is innovative in reminding us that humans and other animals inhabit a landscape that other animals occupied first. The meanings we impose are, from the vantage point of life on Earth, neither inevitable nor universal. She is, however, hardly new in interrogating cowboy mythology, and it’s hard to not see some of her choices as redundant. It’s clear, for example, that her use of the word Indian conveys a perspective and that her characters’ conversations about Indigenous people tell us something about them. But there’s a point at which an omniscient narrator that’s casually racist becomes a slap in the face. And readers will have to decide for themselves if they want to know what comes next in a novel that spends its first 65 pages recounting the ugly details of a single night that ends with a woman being gang-raped and thrown into a pit filled with lime on top of a stillborn foal.
Ambitious, inventive, and aggressively repellent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913505-14-1
Page Count: 328
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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 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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