A pleasantly engaging and evocative historical novel with strong main characters.
Dunlap presents a mother-and-daughter drama set in the era of early silent movies.
It’s 1910, and 17-year-old Sylvie Button and her mother, Justine have been keeping secrets from each other. When Sylvie was a small child, the pair left Paris, establishing a new life in New York City. Justine found employment as a piecework seamstress, raising Sylvie as a single mother while working out of a tenement apartment in Lower Manhattan. She’s never told Sylvie anything about her father, nor about the circumstances surrounding their hasty exit from France. Meanwhile, Sylvie, a top student who’s on track to receive a teaching scholarship, has begun fantasizing about a future that will disrupt Justine’s carefully laid plans for her; she longs to work in the burgeoning silent movie industry and perhaps even become like the famous young woman she sees onscreen at the nickelodeon: “I didn’t fall in love with the Vitagraph girl. I wanted to be the Vitagraph girl.” It’s a dream she shares with Paolo Bonnano, a handsome Italian man whom she meets at church one Sunday. Paolo convinces her to have pictures taken by a professional photographer who owes him a favor. When Sylvie returns home after a photoshoot, she finds Justine in the arms of a strange man and runs away from home with Paolo, who’s running away for other reasons; they find themselves in the middle of a wicked blizzard that’s hit the city. Dunlap’s melodrama is narrated in alternating chapters by Sylvie and Justine, their voices full of youthful determination and world-weary suspicion, respectively. The story can be overly melodramatic at times, but it offers an enjoyable peek behind the scenes of early moviemaking, with much of the story taking place in the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn, where many original 10-minute silent shorts were filmed. A bit of adventure and danger keep the action moving at a steady clip, and readers will also be intrigued by the evolving friendship between Justine and her employer, Aaron Silverstein.
A pleasantly engaging and evocative historical novel with strong main characters.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781639886524
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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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