A debut that will enchant readers with its poetic prose and haunted realism.
Swanborough presents a novel about four generations of Welsh women under one roof, in which unsettling truths are never far away and ghosts are as common as cats.
In a small town in southern Wales, a house known as Ty Merched (“The Women’s House”) provides a home for elderly Lizzie Coombe; her daughter, Myfanwy; her 30-something granddaughter, Sarah Maud, who “needs both her names to hold her up” as she “knows life as a string of shattered nights and unendurable days”; and her great-granddaughter, Jenner. Lizzie is held in high respect by the others, although it’s accompanied by no small amount of rancor and fear. The book opens on her 100th birthday, when she’s still a lively force, and it tells a story of relationships, both among the four women and between them and the gossipy townsfolk. There are familiar character types, including fussy old men and women; a repressed, pompous vicar named Twdr Morgan; and DS Watcyns, an oafish, lazy, and dangerous constable. Mysteries abound, none deeper than who murdered a stranger found in the garden at Ty Merched. The victim is never identified, but Watcyns gets it into his head that the sensitive Jenner, who’s merely 10 years old,committed the crime. A series of events culminates in a mysterious fire that proves cleansing in a way that readers will find strange yet beautiful. It’s an impressive tale, and Swanborough is a talented, lyrical writer whose style reminds one of the works of Dylan Thomas. The setting of her novel is the Wales of the ancients, spirits, and sprites, and Ty Merched is similarly haunted—a circumstance that everyone sees as natural as the weather. (Even the furniture muses silently with one another.) Similarly, there’s a quiet, ghostly interiority to the storytelling at times, and metaphor rules: Jenner is “a child-bride of misfortune, a virgin sacrifice to the knives of rumour”; Myfanwy, always troubled, “walks the lane like she’s stepping on expired obligations.”
A debut that will enchant readers with its poetic prose and haunted realism.Pub Date: March 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781763500006
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Two Feathers Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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