An impressive debut bursting with detail and love for the town it brings to life.
A small town in northern Maine is shaken by a young mother’s death.
Bowring’s first novel centers on three couples—two middle-aged and one in their 20s with a new baby—in the fictional town of Dalton in 1990. There’s a lumber mill, library, dive bar, grocery store, and diner. Bowring offers endless, rich details about life in Dalton, making a satisfying story of each chapter, expanding the emotional history of the place, yielding great depths of pain behind small, daily gestures of human connection. This gives the novel the feel of a local lovingly revealing all, carefully charting the tension the characters endure, young and old: “the silent, constant, compulsive guarding of one’s biggest feelings, regrets, and desires.” The town doctor Richard Haskell’s marriage has long been essentially over, and, like a priest, he bears “the weight of other people’s fears and secrets” yet “continues his slow art of healing what can never be healed.” His wife, Trudy, the library director, is in love with Bev Theroux, who’s also married to a man; their husbands know of their love and keep the secret to keep the peace between them and their neighbors, who they know would ostracize the families if the truth were out. Bev’s son, Nate, is an earnest good cop whose wife, Bridget, stopped painting when she became pregnant and feels forced to hide her postpartum depression. Bowring’s prose is alive with careful observation and reminiscent of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s work, though with less edge and a more expansive feel and intimate care for the characters. When Bridget’s sudden death sends grief rippling through everyone’s lives, Bowring creates a portrait of their dignity and their unflinching, if cold, dedication to each other.
An impressive debut bursting with detail and love for the town it brings to life.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781609459260
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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