A story and a main character both in search of meaning.
A family life’s is made both richer and more complicated by the arrival of a new nanny.
Martin and Lily are a seemingly enviable couple: Each has a relatively successful career (Martin with an investment firm as a market analyst and Lily as a corporate lawyer); with the help of Lily’s family money, the two have a spacious home near New York City and live quite well; and they have young twin boys. When their longtime nanny moves to California, she seems irreplaceable until Maeve, a 20-year-old woman newly arrived from Ireland, agrees to be their live-in au pair. Maeve soon becomes integral to the family, bringing joy to the kids, order to the house, and a spark to Lily and Martin’s otherwise monotonous and hollow 8-year-old marriage. Both Martin and Lily struggle to remember how they came to each other and this moment in their lives, especially Martin, who had planned to finish his dissertation, teach economics, and marry a girl from Indiana. Yet the more Lily and Martin’s marriage and their family depend on Maeve to function, the more the couple push to endear themselves to her, including by becoming more sexually adventurous. The unlikability of the central couple is precisely the point, as the novel questions how much substance there is to their lives, yet the narrative fails to find any momentum in this question and is instead weighed down by numerous lengthy flashbacks to Martin’s and Lily’s lives prior to meeting as well as Martin’s musings during bouts of insomnia. It is clear that he has little understanding of either Lily or Maeve or much connection to them, especially in his particularly painful descriptions of their bodies, and this could easily become a novel about his midlife crisis. Sadly, none of these characters become fully realized, and neither does the impetus of the plot.
A story and a main character both in search of meaning.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-942658-91-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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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