Evocative depictions of work, confinement, and the fantasy of escape.
Yearnings from East German writer Hilbig (1941-2007).
Work and nature wrestle everywhere in these stories, first published in 1982 and newly translated from German. Hilbig’s background as a millworker is present throughout the collection, often only by implication; the more peripheral his occupation is, the more interesting the stories are. “Idyll” begins like an Impressionist painting, indulging a naïve scene of “enticing grass” and water that takes “the form of a noise suspended over the surroundings”—before a declension to labor and drudgery: “How dreary, how pathetic to work…how tiresome to know what country I live in.” “Thirst” depicts, in similar detail, the ritual of getting drunk downwind of a soap factory. The narrator conjures “the cloying, unendurable smell of cadavers”—the soap is composed of animal fat—and then says, “You must drink until all memory of that repulsive gas yields.” When the story concludes, “He’d prefer the stench of a stable on the fields’ edge,” the daydreamed countryside is a foil for an absurd, industrial life. Later stories featuring a fugitive and a “pedo” prisoner offer new settings but similar vivid accounts of places that exist only in the characters’ minds. The mechanical description of pedophilia—“a sexual predilection for immature things, botched techniques, devices rendered nearly unusable by their incomplete construction”—mirrors Hilbig’s proposed explanation of factory work to a “visitor from Mars”: “producing machines to manufacture machine parts for assembling machines to manufacture other machines,” and so on. Each is a trap to escape. Hilbig wrote poetry as well as prose, and his tone is often conversational, his grammar loose with long or unfinished sentences. Sometimes, though, the simplest turns of phrase delight. Indulging a daydream, he writes, “I said it as though I were learning to talk.”
Evocative depictions of work, confinement, and the fantasy of escape.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781949641615
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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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