This is a novel that pushes back against the clichés of Southern California to reveal the complex human territory underneath.
Is Susan Straight the bard of Southern California literature?
In her eighth novel—she has also written a memoir and a collection of linked stories as well as a book for young readers—the author stakes her claim. A sweeping and kaleidoscopic work, it begins (how could it not?) on the freeway, “a Thursday in October,” a highway patrol officer named Johnny Frias tells us. “Santa Ana winds, ninety-four degrees. Fire weather. People were three layers of pissed off. Everyone hated Thursday. Wednesday was hump day, but Thursday was when people drove like they wanted to kill each other.” Johnny is one of several protagonists in Straight’s novel, which flows from first to third person and life to life as if to embody the instability of the region it evokes. The notion of Southern California as elusive, beset by wind and traffic, is hardly a new one; it infuses the work of writers such as Joan Didion and Carolyn See. Straight, however, is operating in a different register, one attuned less to Los Angeles than to the sprawl that surrounds it, extending into the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley. Her focus, as it has long been, is on people to whom the stereotypes of sun and speed and reinvention do not apply. Here, that means not only Johnny, but also Ximena, an undocumented domestic worker, and Matelasse, whose husband leaves her with two young sons not long before the Covid-19 pandemic begins. “Black acres of sandy field,” Straight describes the landscape, “the corral where his grandfather’s horses and the bull named Coalmine used to live. Then the arroyo, and the foothills.”
This is a novel that pushes back against the clichés of Southern California to reveal the complex human territory underneath.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3746-0451-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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