An expressive, penetrating novel that highlights the personal stories behind the glitz of the art world.
A New York art consultant sells an Impressionist painting to a sultan and meets someone with concerns about its provenance in Goldberg Igra’s novel.
Emily Wolf aspires to be an art history professor at a New England college, but for now she’s in Manhattan, working at Sterling’s Art Advisory. She’s more bookish than many in the Soho art scene, but she has the requisite expertise to work in New York before heading to the comfy confines of academia. At Sterling’s, she has just bought a $23 million Pissarro for a sultan. Emily meets a man named Nate who has been researching the painting and tells her after the sale that the Pissarro was given to the Nazis by a Jewish family in Paris in exchange for their safety during the war. Nate and Emily start dating, but this revelation complicates things. For Nate, the issue is personal, as a personal tragedy in his family mirrors those of the past. (His mother tells him, “None of this, what you’re trying to do, is going to rid our family of its ghosts.”) The professional becomes personal for Emily, too, and when a flashy Soho gallery owner named Julia comes into the picture, Emily is entranced but also wonders if she’s been targeted. Goldberg Igra’s novel has an irresistible premise, and the narrative’s treatments of the New York art scene and the WWII-era looting of great artworks are beautifully realized, as are the principal characters. The novel is very much steeped in the richness of the art world, but it is also an emotional story propelled by clear lines that are drawn from the present to the past (Nate is one whose personal loss is inseparable from the horrors of history). The author has a wonderful gift for tapping into Emily’s deep feelings of concern, which deftly support the story’s important themes.
An expressive, penetrating novel that highlights the personal stories behind the glitz of the art world.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798888248492
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
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