Often alarming and upsetting, but worth reading for the deep heart at its center.
British writer Dineen’s dystopian story about a woman struggling to keep her children safe in a world on the brink of collapse feels uncomfortably as if it’s describing not a fictional future but next week.
Cass lives in “The City,” never named and located in the south of a country also unnamed but with a British feel. It’s facing extreme versions of conditions familiar today: an increasingly hot climate, frequent fires, collapsing infrastructure, corrupt authoritarian government, extremist gangs, and fraying social norms. Choosing to work abroad, Cass’ husband, Nathaniel, a doctor, has left her behind in The City, where she attempts to protect their children from deteriorating conditions. Many of the strong mothers in recent fiction pale in comparison to Cass, with her fierce maternal commitment—not only to her own baby but also to the 4- and 8-year-olds whose mothers died during Nathaniel’s previous two marriages. She experiences typical moments of contemporary motherhood, from easing a resistant child to sleep to resenting a husband’s lack of involvement to sexual fantasizing, but Cass also deals with the breakdown of electricity and communication technology, has a room devoted to bottled water storage, worries that the kids have become used to breathing burned air, and regularly rehearses “terror runs” in her head to prepare for the potential moment when she must escape with the kids. Then a group of male climate activists—Nathaniel thinks they’re incels—attacks a playground. Cass first heads to her mother-in-law’s secluded rural home, where there’s food and breathable air, but staying with the untrustworthy Eden proves untenable. Cass’ next stop is a commune of sorts in the supposedly safe, walled-off north. But safety is never certain; Cass’ choices, never easy to make. The new world order described by Dineen’s graceful prose is sometimes unbearably depressing, yet this is not an apocalypse. Happiness remains a possibility for Cass and her kids.
Often alarming and upsetting, but worth reading for the deep heart at its center.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781419767951
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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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