A bleak, affecting portrait that points to immeasurable collateral damage.
A Jewish man in 1940 Argentina confronts his mother’s fate when she’s confined in the Warsaw ghetto.
Born in Argentina, Amigorena grew up in France, whose language he writes in and where this novel has been nominated for several prizes, including the Prix Goncourt. It is part of a series of autobiographical novels the author, also a prolific screenwriter, has been writing since the 1990s, and in a preface, he calls the present novel “the source” of the project. The last chapter clarifies the connection. The narrative follows a few years in the life of Vicente Rosenberg, who moved to Argentina from Poland in 1928, leaving behind his mother. Despite her many letters pleading for a response, he does not write to her for years, even as antisemitism rises in Europe. Then German troops invade Poland and the Nazis create the Warsaw ghetto. Shortly after the novel opens in late 1940, Vicente gets a letter in which his mother describes hardships in the ghetto and asks him to send money. He thinks of all the chances he had to get her out of Warsaw. He feels the onset of a “sense of the guilt that he would never truly erase from his heart.” The novel tracks the deepening of this guilt and its effect on Vicente and his wife and three children. In the next few years, the letters stop and news of the death camps starts to reach Vicente. His life becomes a “desolate void” in which “his wife and children scarcely existed.” He stops speaking and gambles compulsively. Amigorena charts the man’s guilt-driven psychological deterioration in careful detail, from small matters (“What difference would it make whether or not he ate more gnocchi?”) to abject misery. Even in extremes of emotion, the translation offers controlled, lucid prose.
A bleak, affecting portrait that points to immeasurable collateral damage.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-301833-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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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