Mona's Eyes

I decided to pick up and read Barnes & Noble book of the year for 2025 in Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schlesser. This was Thomas Schlesser's sophomore work and I must say it was outstanding. It tells the tale of a young girl, Mona, who is ten years old at the beginning of the book, who is at risk of going blind. Her grandfather, out of love and care, decides to take her to an art museum to observe a masterpiece and to analyze it and to talk about it.

Mona's Eyes Book Cover

The characters in this book, the small family and a handful of friends and acquaintances, are all endearing and memorable. Mona's parents kind of take a back seat to the story due to the episodic cycle of the book revolving around the museum visits, but they still have depth and still even develop throughout the book.

I enjoyed looking up each chapter's masterpiece on the internet on my phone. The hardcover copy of this book that I got from Barnes & Noble actually has all fifty-two of the masterpieces printed on the inside of it, which it took me a good while to realize. Even once I knew, though, I usually looked them up on my phone.

Inside the Dust Jacket

The author is well learned about art and art history and it shows in the book. If anything, it made me wish I had pursued it more diligently and understood it better myself. But I did learn a few things along the way, which I'll take with me for quite some time.

Although Mona is young, this is a coming-of-age story and even delves into some controversial topics later in the novel. I wanted to share a couple of quotes from later in the book just to show how the prose is effective at being both touching and insightful. "Moving forward in life means making the grueling effort to bring out into the light the wounds that we hadn't seen coming, and that, by their very surreptitiousness, traumatize us to the depths of our being." And just one more brief one: "Because all childhoods are made up of countless misunderstandings, discomforts, and traumas." Not to focus on the darker sides of the narrative in my selections - there is a lot of beauty and warmth in this book as well.

The grandfather often talks about the artists themselves in each chapter - their lives, their challenges and tribulations, and their accomplishments. These stories are neat because not only are they true, but they also are revealing about the nature of humanity and its experience.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes good books or who has a passion for art. Or for family. It's amazingly well written and well executed. I had concerns in the latter half that it may end weakly, but it most certainly did not.