Whip-smart and ambitious, but tangled in its own web of themes and scenarios.
A father and daughter share an epic bond over anxiety and addiction.
Hallberg’s 2015 breakthrough, City on Fire, exemplified Tom Wolfe’s concept of the billion-footed beast, a social novel that strived to capture the world in its fullness. This disappointing follow-up is similarly bulky and rangy (and very New York) but narrows its focus to two lead characters. In 2011, when most of the novel is set, Ethan Aspern is a recovering addict who’s determined to bond with his hyperintelligent 13-year-old daughter, Jolie. But she has her own set of emotional issues, including some ill-advised drinking that leads to a near-miss with a subway train when she hops on the tracks to recover her phone. The novel shifts back and forth in time, chronicling Ethan’s unlikely romance with Sarah Kupferberg, Jolie’s mother (he’s listless, she’s an aspiring academic); his fraught relationship with his father, head of a foundering private school; Jolie’s budding, sketchy friendship with a young man equally interested in Occupy Wall Street and LSD; and Sarah’s parents, judgmental of everybody involved. The core of the novel occurs during a (metaphorically fraught) Thanksgiving weekend, as Ethan attempts to bond with a Jolie who’s determined to give everyone the silent treatment; what ensues includes (among other things) accusations of kidnapping, a bad LSD trip, and anaphylactic shock. Hallberg enlivens this setup by playing with form, modeling sections after an old-school mixtape and shuffling perspectives, but his efforts to show how the parent-child bond both persists and disrupts feels stodgy. Fans of Jonathan Franzen will appreciate Hallberg’s hyperprecise, socially acute observational skill; readers of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels will note a similarly desperate, self-deprecating dad in Ethan. But the resulting novel is too overworked to feel as lively and funny as either of those authors.
Whip-smart and ambitious, but tangled in its own web of themes and scenarios.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536926
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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