Some of these short forays show real promise while others lamentably veer into the didactic.
Ten short stories convey the mixture of longing, duty, and general precarity that characterizes modern life.
Holtzman, who wrote The Bethune Murals (2018), writes in a pleasingly restrained, surrealist mode in the titular tale, which satirizes how the pharmaceutical industry generates profit by treating even the most benign human foibles. The author’s characters often hope to challenge capitalist structures but are flawed in their pursuit, such as Marvin in “The Umbrella,” who compares himself unfavorably to a hardscrabble acquaintance: “He had…given money to progressive causes, but it was fluff compared to Leslie’s existential involvement with capitalism.” “The Boyfriend” recalls classics such as Gabriel García Márquez’s 1992 story “Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane” in the way its elderly protagonist, Jeff, harbors an unrequited yearning for a younger woman, but Holtzman fails to bring poignancy to its conclusion. “Brahms’ Fourth Symphony” is an engrossing story that occasionally features a lyrical voice, as when Joan, the protagonist, reflects, “Around a curve in the road, my headlights caught the trees laced with snow. How evanescent, I thought sadly. By morning, the wind will have left nothing but skeletal branches.” “A Cascading Failure,” however, is itself one—a concatenating series of unrealistic and apocalyptic predictions linked by a thin, unbelievable plot. Game theory’s intersection with romance is Holtzman’s material in “Only a Game,” a narrative rife with the kinds of entanglements that one typically finds in a campus novel. Throughout the collection, Holtzman flirts with moralism, and he addresses this tendency in the book’s introduction: “Unlike writers who dismiss making points as propaganda, I don’t think it a sin to expose my own beliefs….[I]f they get you angry, that’s great.” One can see this most clearly in “Last Days of Summer” and “See Jane Run”—two uninspiring attempts to address post-2016 political polarization in the United States. Likewise, “A Foot in the Door” is an unnecessary, tone-deaf #MeToo story written from a male abuser’s point of view.
Some of these short forays show real promise while others lamentably veer into the didactic.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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