A great conceit filled with unrealized potential.
An ardent young woman navigates a world in which technology has eradicated the need for sex for all but its most devout practitioners.
Amane is still a child when she learns the disturbing truth that her mother became pregnant with her through sexual intercourse with her father. In Amane’s Japan, technological advances designed to “produce lots of children for the war effort” have replaced traditional modes of conception; sex in general is considered to be old-fashioned and sex between husband and wife is seen as incest. In fact, many of Amane’s contemporaries find the idea of partnered sexual gratification so foreign that they are increasingly asexual, forging romantic attachments solely with anime characters. Amane, a rare woman who insists on sex, creates a division between the romantic life she enjoys with both real-life boyfriends and the 40 characters she loves and the sexless family life she’s built with her husband, Saku; this works well until Amane’s mid-30s. In the throes of a difficult love affair of his own, her husband decides to move to Experiment City, a government-run enclave where the last vestiges of the “family system” are being eradicated in favor of algorithm-controlled breeding. In spite of her doubts, Amane joins him in the name of “the religion of family,” but she can’t help but bring her belief in the physical union of two bodies along with her. The novel’s frank exploration of desire from the perspective of an entire civilization of naïfs exposes some base-level assumptions about the part sexual reproduction plays in society. Unfortunately, the naïveté of the main characters seems to imprint on the novel itself, with the result that even the most potentially incendiary elements of this new world order are explored with neither nuance nor depth. The characters remain suspended in a kind of enforced adolescence—unable to either grow from worldly experience or totally abandon their society’s inherited structures and forge something new.
A great conceit filled with unrealized potential.Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780802164667
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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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