Heart-wrenching in its realism, this novel captures the recklessness of young lust and the enduring pain of familial love.
A boy moves with his family from Colombia to the U.S., only to embark on his own journey of self-discovery.
This intense and tender debut novel follows the plight of a young boy, Santiago, as he navigates childhood and young adulthood across two continents, from Colombia to Miami to New York and back again. In Ibagué, Santiago’s father departs for extended stretches, ostensibly working in Tierra Caliente, Mexico. The boy’s mother also disappears, though her whereabouts are less certain, leaving Santiago and his older brother, Manuel, to cope and fend for themselves: “We, the boys, will bathe in the rivers....We will be revolutionaries.” In the novel’s opening section, Sanchez employs the definitive article to impose a jarring distance between “the mother,” “the father,” “the brother,” and “the boy” before pivoting to a more conventional first-person perspective. Eventually, the brothers move with their mother to Miami, and then Santiago strikes out on his own for New York, where he can fully explore his burgeoning queer identity. Part family saga, part coming-of-age story, the novel reckons with issues of abandonment, migration, and gay identity, as Santiago confronts the ripple effects of trauma and separation on his family. When Santiago returns to Colombia to visit, Sanchez pivots point of view again to focus on the mother. Throughout, the author’s close attention to tiny details yields a finely rendered material and emotional landscape, whether it’s a discarded plastic sofa cover, a dress removed by the mother for inspection (like “the hide of an animal, symmetrically filleted”), or postcoital perspiration from one of Santiago’s older partners: “three lines of sweat running down his pecs.” In its depiction of brotherly bonds, Latin American men, and gay sexuality, the novel is comparable to We the Animals by Justin Torres and marks the emergence of an exciting new voice in American fiction.
Heart-wrenching in its realism, this novel captures the recklessness of young lust and the enduring pain of familial love.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593542187
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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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