A challenging, risk-taking work marked by a wry and compassionate intelligence.
A man nearing death tries to tell his wife certain things about himself in this dark, affecting work.
Leo Fife, a documentary filmmaker and teacher, sits in a wheelchair at home with a morphine drip and a bladder bag, dying of cancer at 77. For most of one day, April 1, 2018, he’s on the other side of the camera as former students want to record him explaining how he made his famous films. Leo has other plans, namely to reveal to his wife of more than 35 years facts about himself, tapping into “a tsunami of memories.” They include dropping out of college with plans to fight for Castro, divorce, drinking with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, betraying a longtime artist friend, and his real Vietnam War draft status. The novel’s structure, which alternates two very different narrative segments, seems awkward at first and then strikingly effective. There are the bare, Beckett-like present-day sections in which Leo as talking head delivers his tale to the camera under one spotlight and chats testily with those in the room. Longer, time-hopping sections present Leo’s past in a less-flattering light than his public persona enjoyed. It can be hard to know what’s true in any of this, for Leo is a highly unreliable narrator given his illness, his medications, his own doubts about his memory, and the challenges his story elicits from the former students, who regard him as hero and mentor, as well as from an unexpected source. Banks, who turned 80 this year, explores aging, memory, and reputation in thoughtful and touching ways, enhanced by the correspondence between aspects of Leo’s life and the writer’s own history. At one point a character says, “It’s like trying to tie a novel to the author’s real life.” Maybe setting the story on April Fools’ Day is the broadest nod to such delusive links and to the deceits and truths of creativity.
A challenging, risk-taking work marked by a wry and compassionate intelligence.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-303675-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
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
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
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