An entertaining and thoughtful group of stories.
Clark offers a collection of city-based short stories exploring themes of adulthood, marriage, parenthood, and loss.
These 10 vignettes excavate interior musings and relationships between spouses, parents, and children; most of the stories center around marriage. In the title story, a writer and lifelong New Yorker ponders the main character of a story he is working on as he gets his young son ready for school and reminisces about his wife. “For the Love Of Wasabi Peas” is a poignant portrait of a couple that has married three times and divorced twice as they are on the verge of their third divorce. (“When you fall in love, no matter how old you become, how many years pass, a part of you remains that age for each other forever, no matter what.”) In “His Day at the Beach” and “The Reunion,” divorced fathers grapple with the distances between them and their sons. (“I could lose her. But my kids, my boys? I had to lie down. My heart was beating so fast I thought I’d die, and I couldn’t do that and leave them unprotected.”) “The Revenge Fund” is a marked contrast; in this tale, a young woman is the only one of her friends denied entrance to a club. (“The buzzard doesn’t think she can hear him, says out the side of his mouth, ‘Face Control.’ He’s referring to her. It’s her face that’s being controlled. Being excluded, shut out.”) When she gets an unexpected and large inheritance the following week, she takes elaborate and satisfying revenge on the buzzardlike bouncer. In his first collection of short stories, Clark deftly depicts people of varying ages and perspectives. The conversations throughout are sharp and authentic, as are the interior monologues that illuminate the motives and actions of characters. For the most part, the stories take place in New York City and its environs, with witty evocations of its gruff reputation; even “A Last Stroll Through Her Favorite City,” set in Paris, includes this shout-out: “How unlike New York, a woman just smiled at me for no reason.”
An entertaining and thoughtful group of stories.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2024
ISBN: 9798990416727
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Black Note Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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