Ambiguity and irony curdle with unsettling results in an engaging story of early 2000s metropolitan Americana.
In D’Stair’s novel, a young woman cleans her great-grandmother’s untidy house and confronts the reality of her unfocused present.
It’s 2001, and for almost a year, 20-something Cora Freelene has been living rent-free with her cat, Chloe, in her late great-grandmother’s impossibly cluttered abode in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. She’s been tasked with cleaning and organizing the place, where 10-year-old TV Guides coexist with garish, clown-themed cookie jars and 1940s-era erotic photos. Cora struggles to complete her mission, even as the one-year deadline creeps closer, and it soon becomes clear that her boredom and frustration with life runs deep. She derives little satisfaction from her day job, which requires parsing Congressional hearings into terse sentences: “Glumly or with joy, either way, the abstract must come forth.” Her relationships with her coworkers are shallow and superficial, at best, but for a while, she entertains an interest in Roman, her favorite clerk at local Potomac Video. In some respects, this story comes across as the Generation X version of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”; however, instead of its protagonist vowing, “I would prefer not to,” Cora appears to want to do something else, but she isn’t sure what it is. D’Stair has fashioned a compassionate and very modern narrative, skillfully weaving together the threads of Cora’s dissatisfaction (“She always makes the wrong choice. What else could she have done?”) with a world that never stops intruding on her quiet life, particularly after Sept. 11, 2001. Her problems seem fated to overwhelm her—a problem that the author resolves in an unlikely but satisfying fashion. Despite its setting, this isn’t a glib Douglas Coupland–esque slacker-fest, but a more complex tale that readers will be glad they picked up.
Ambiguity and irony curdle with unsettling results in an engaging story of early 2000s metropolitan Americana.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798330422883
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Late Marriage Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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