Elegant and unpredictable in the best possible way.
An inventive novel about family from a risk-taking writer.
Daley-Ward memorably played with structure in her memoir, The Terrible (2018), which combined prose and poetry to tell the story of her fraught childhood and young adulthood. Her debut novel finds her using a similar toolbox, but in a very new way. The book follows 30-year-old twin sisters Clara, a writer whose debut novel is making literary waves, and Dempsey, who works an uninspiring administrative job. The two aren’t close, and haven’t been since they were adopted into different families as children after their mother was found dead on the bank of the Thames. Clara was “the chosen one,” welcomed into a wealthy family, while Dempsey was adopted by a single man, a member of the local council—the twins are, as Clara says, “opposite halves of a strange truth, both born from a force unknown.” Clara is shocked when she sees a woman shoplifting at a department store and believes it’s her long-dead mother, Serene, somehow brought back as a 30-year-old with no children. Clara stalks the woman, and they eventually become friends, to the horror of Dempsey, who thinks her sister—a prolific drinker—is losing her mind. The novel switches perspectives between Clara, convinced that she's found her mother, and Dempsey, just trying to live her life, as Clara and the mystery woman enter into a bizarre and intense relationship. Daley-Ward explores the tension between the twins beautifully, with Dempsey struggling to pull her sister from the brink; both harbor barely concealed grudges against the other. (“Sometimes, I could happily decapitate my sister,” muses Dempsey at one point; not long after, Clara thinks, “Sometimes, I could happily strangle Dempsey.”) The novel ends with a genuine shock, but it’s earned—it’s a surprising conclusion to a beautifully written and structured book.
Elegant and unpredictable in the best possible way.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781324092513
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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