Elegant and unsettling, this novel evades the expected at every turn.
A web of friendship among millennial Black women stretches across several decades.
Desiree, Nakia, January, and Monique grew up together. They haven’t all known each other since childhood, but they came into adulthood together, navigating the tumult of their 20s, 30s, and 40s. At the opening of Flournoy’s novel—the first since her acclaimed debut, The Turner House (2015)—Desiree is 22. The year is 2008 and she’s traveling to Zurich via Paris with her grandfather, who plans to die the next day through assisted suicide. Her grandfather is all the family she has; her mother is long dead, her father long absent, and her relationship with her older sister, Danielle, deeply strained. She feels herself adrift and without prospects, but as it turns out, Desiree’s destiny is, in large part, as the anchor of her friend group. Flournoy toggles back and forth in time and perspective across the women, a structure that makes the book feel more like linked stories than a novel with a typical narrative throughline. This enables each woman to be deeply, prismatically rendered: Monique is a librarian-turned-influencer; January is a melancholic mother of two sons; Nakia is a lesbian restaurateur. (Desiree’s sister, Danielle, receives a narrative interlude, as well.) They endure hookups and breakups, Covid-19, financial woes, careers, caregiving—“the wilderness of adult life.” It’s easy to marvel at Flournoy’s precision with character, the heart of the novel, but it’s the book’s hard look at social and political realities that give it its teeth. By setting select scenes—including the novel’s shattering climax—in the near future, Flournoy seems to warn that the violence and oppression characteristic of 21st-century American life can be mitigated only by community, care, and the families we choose.
Elegant and unsettling, this novel evades the expected at every turn.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780063318779
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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