A melancholy journey through one man’s damaged past.
Regrets burden a life.
Charles Lamosway, the protagonist of Talty’s debut novel, is a man haunted by guilt and shame. Though he was raised by his white mother and Native American stepfather on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation, he had to leave at age 18. Now in his late 50s, he lives across the river from his former home. From there, he can observe the house where Elizabeth, the daughter he fathered out of wedlock, was raised by her mother, Mary, and the Native man she thought was her father. He ruminates about the single contact he had with Elizabeth, lasting only a few minutes, when she was 3 years old, as well as the inadvertent role he played in the events leading up to the death of his stepfather, Fredrick. He’s burdened and aggravated by his mother Louise’s slide into dementia, the recurrence of her persistent depression, and his memory of a painful incident that took place on the reservation when he was a teenager. In this deliberately paced, moody novel, Talty, himself a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, considers questions of identity, as Charles observes that “I knew and still know what it was like to both not belong and belong” and acknowledges that his acquiescence in Mary’s decision to raise their daughter on the reservation “goes deeper than blood.” But the author’s principal concern lies with how past events in his characters’ lives resonate painfully in the present. As Charles, who’d been estranged from his mother for several years before entering Alcoholics Anonymous, now reluctantly becomes responsible for her well-being, his desire to reconnect with Elizabeth, regardless of the consequences, only intensifies until it climaxes on the night of a swirling nor’easter. As Charles says, “We are made of stories, and if we don’t know them—the ones that make us—how can we ever be fully realized? How can we ever be who we really are?”
A melancholy journey through one man’s damaged past.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781959030553
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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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