A mordantly wry examination of one disgruntled man’s life.
A novel about the fragility of millennial masculinity.
Greathead’s novel chronicles the eponymous George’s life from childhood to early middle age. The book begins with George’s mother criticizing his father’s spending habits at 12-year-old George’s graduation from a drug-abuse-resistance program. George is aware of his father’s financial shortcomings as well as his mother’s contempt. While he watches Jackass with his sister, he can’t help but feel “implicated in his mother’s disgust with lowbrow contemporary culture, as though he were somehow responsible for it by being a member of the generation it was directed toward.” This disgust for lowbrow culture is also a disgust for performances of masculinity that are neither nice nor successful. When his father dies a few years later of a stroke, George is suspicious of people who exude naïveté or optimism. “Their cheery innocence,” he reflects, “was like an abrasive on a wound.” As George comes of age, he develops an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman named Jenny, who loves him openly, though he will not, at first, say it back. He exhibits outbursts of anger and is so critical of others that Jenny tells him, “Some people go through life trying to build others up….You like to poke holes.” Though George can be unlikable, he is self-aware. “George had been feeling like a loser recently,” Greathead writes toward the end, though he’s been behaving like one for some time. Ultimately, it’s unclear what George wants out of life or how he plans to succeed without leaning on his girlfriend, sister, or mother financially and emotionally. Greathead’s portrayal of an aggrieved white man struggling to find his place in the world is as much a portrait of an unsuccessful artist as a young man as it is a portrait of our times.
A mordantly wry examination of one disgruntled man’s life.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781250351029
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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