A challenging yet inspiring portrait of the resilience of Black families.
From the time she's 6 years old, Lottie Rebecca Lee, the namesake of both her grandmother and great-grandmother, is haunted by the spirits of seven generations of ancestors as she struggles to make sense of her family’s intergenerational trauma.
From a young age, Lottie Rebecca says, she knew that what she “was experiencing about living and what other people were experiencing were different dimensions of remembering.” Lottie Rebecca’s visions begin with her great-great-great grandmother’s capture by slave traders in the Congo and move on to the hot Mississippi tobacco fields where her grandfather Bennie grew up under the violent hand of his father, “Old Deddy,” and his desperate mother, Lottie, who danced at Mr. Genorette’s tavern as she tried to save enough money to escape their plight. Lottie Rebecca also observes the experiences of Bennie and his son, B.J., her father, during the Korean and Vietnam wars and the hidden battles with PTSD, violence, and addiction that follow them home. Tracing the family's trauma through the decades and the path to healing through storytelling, the novel recalls Octavia Butler’s Kindred in its innovative approach to time and its rendering of history in ways that are immediate to the modern reader and Toni Morrison’s Beloved in its exploration of haunting, trauma, and family identity. The novel seems to embody the past more fully than it does the present, though, and as a result loses some of its narrative power as it arrives at its hopeful yet somewhat attenuated conclusion. While the novel does remain cohesive, more of the urgency that characterized its beginning would have propelled it from being very good to great.
A challenging yet inspiring portrait of the resilience of Black families.Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780063160958
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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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