Social conscience meets psychological despair in stories that show plenty of literary command.
Families fall apart and occasionally come together in this debut collection.
Each of these 10 stories features a first-person narrator, a man or a woman, gay or straight, likely in their 20s or 30s, trying to make some tenuous connections amid the confusions of modern life. Who are they, where are they, why are they? They don’t know where their jobs are going, where their lives are going, where they belong, or with whom. And they live amid the threats of climate crisis, terrorist bombs, and an expanding chasm between the haves and have-nots. “The Birds of Basra,” the opener, is one of the best and most ambitious of the stories; it imagines a model of caregiving in which the elderly and infirm are charged for each individual task, their attendants nickel-and-diming them until they either die or their funds run out. The young narrator, a female caregiver, has a partner who is more socially aware and who tells her, “You rob elderly people.” Yes she does, but the narrator also feels something for the woman she watches. The money runs out, and the job will as well, but the story doesn’t really resolve itself. These stories rarely do—they start in the middle of something and end somewhere else in the middle, with the reader learning something more about the narrator and the others than perhaps these characters know about themselves. There is plenty of disease and death and babies, wanted or not. In “Phosphorous,” a man has something of a psychotic breakdown and risks criminal charges to procure a baby after his wife dies in childbirth. In “The Paragon of Animals,” an unanticipated pregnancy leads to complications that a married couple had assumed they would never face. The closing “Tennessee” finds the narrator’s institutionalized mother going crazier while his wife is about to give birth.
Social conscience meets psychological despair in stories that show plenty of literary command.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9798885740128
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Hub City Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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