A well-told coming-of-age story for a late bloomer, which could have used a round of restructuring.
A law school grad endures unwelcome career changes, a dire relationship with his father and a precarious marriage in Jones’ (After Isaactown, 2011) latest drama.
Life after law school for John Howard meant work as a door-to-door salesman; his biggest seller was the Portapotty. But when he loses his job and moves back in with his parents, his father’s spiteful behavior convinces John to secure employment elsewhere. What follows is a surprising shift in careers and a volatile romance with Kathy, another lawyer, all in the hope that he can make a better life for himself, away from his father’s control. Jones’ appealing novel works best outside the courtroom: John’s wedding and the first weeks of marriage, or even his search for a job, are far more enthralling and thematically relevant than a lengthy courtroom scene with John sitting second chair and giving an unimpressive performance. The convincing father-son dynamic lingers even without the father’s presence, and after being passive in most of his relationships, both business and personal, John has an intriguing reversal of his father/husband role. The striking narrative style often reads like unfiltered access to John’s mind; one of the most notable moments features John thinking of his father while his boss speaks, with John having to interrupt his thought process so he can listen to what’s being said. The narrative occasionally slips into Yoda-speak, which can be jarring: “Eerie, it was,” or “The worst of times, this was.” Thanks to refreshing humor, John’s predicament isn’t as depressing as it might have been: He avoids telling Kathy that he’s lost his job for as long as possible; his marriage proposal has a hilariously awkward response; and a young, exasperating passenger makes the plane ride to their honeymoon destination nearly unbearable. The chronology has some holes in it, though: John is 26 in 1987, but a flashback to 1962 has his then-age as 8, giving him a birthdate of possibly 1954, which would make him 32 or 33 in 1987.
A well-told coming-of-age story for a late bloomer, which could have used a round of restructuring.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1477429372
Page Count: 304
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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