An insistently unlikable main character and redundant storytelling add up to an unsatisfying novel.
A 90-year-old man’s life story is told, and told again.
This novel opens with musings about the memoir its protagonist meant to write, then abruptly switches to his funeral. Doyle Shields of Michigan—retired embalmer, Marine veteran, widower, and recovering alcoholic—has died at age 90, in the shower, while receiving oral sex. In its first chapter, the third-person narration describes him as someone who came to the enjoyment of reading only late in life, and notes that “reading had made Doyle all the more boorish, with mindless and unsolicited opinions and an inextinguishable flow of banter and blather.” The rest of the book sets out to prove it. It tells the story of Doyle’s life in spirals rather than a straight line, turning around his several obsessions. One is his horrific experiences as a teenage Marine in the South Pacific during World War II. Another is his long, mostly happy but ultimately unfulfilled marriage to Sally, whom he fell for in fifth grade and married right after the war. He sees it as unfulfilled because of another of his obsessions: oral sex, which Sally’s devout Catholicism ruled out as nonreproductive. (That leaves it forever conflated with religion in his mind, although he considers himself a nonbeliever.) After Sally’s death at 65, Doyle meets Johanna, an almost comically idealized younger lover who isn’t interested in marriage but puts up with his prattling and bossiness and seems as enthusiastic about giving and getting head as he is. He also hires an assistant and platonic companion, an even younger woman named Hypatia, whose main job seems to be to listen to him complain. There is emotional heft to some sections of the novel, especially the gruesome passages about the war. There are a few flashes of humor. The prose is occasionally lyrical, but it’s more often florid, overstuffed with elaborate, frequently repetitive description. That’s magnified by the looping structure, which returns to the same events with an effect that’s dulling rather than dramatic. By the time Doyle succumbs, it’s old news.
An insistently unlikable main character and redundant storytelling add up to an unsatisfying novel.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781567927054
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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