Complex and enigmatic; a book that defies both expectations and definition.
A meditation on truth and its consequences, told by a consummate liar.
The narrator of this slim, scholarly, sexy novel has been a liar since childhood. Raised in Athens until the age of 16, her seamlessly multilingual upbringing, combined with an unusual degree of independence necessitated by her mother’s long illness and eventual death, impressed upon her a need to control the narrative of her life—by inventing it. By lying, in other words, which she does fluently, constantly, and largely without guilt. As a young adult living in London, she has created a compartmentalized life in which her flatmates, editors at freelance jobs, the director of her stalled master’s program in writing, and rotation of simultaneous sexual partners all believe different things about her past, present, and plans for the future. Then she meets Normal Ben, at first another pleasurable two-week interlude on her strictly organized schedule, whose stolid security in his own identity, quick wit, kindness, and sexual chemistry with the narrator cause her to let the relationship linger and grow. At around the same time, she starts a correspondence with Anna, an American journalist, that develops into an economic and intellectual affiliation. When Anna gives her a more involved assignment, the narrator finds herself obsessively cataloging transcriptions of a particularly nasty “he said, she said” rape case wherein both participants’ act of speaking their truth has erased any chance that this truth might exist in an objective fashion. Exposure to this story triggers a complex renegotiation of her own abuse at the hands of an ex-lover, which has ramifications on her relationship with Normal Ben that are far more nuanced than being caught in either a lie or in the slippery, non-negotiable truth. The novel is told by a relentlessly confident narrator who intersperses her accounts of sex, domination, control, and the interplay of power with passages of scholarly nonfiction detailing psychologist Paul Ekman’s attempt to develop a universal catalog of emotions and the ramifications of that work on policing in the U.S. and in the U.K. The result is an emotional novel fraught with science; a scientific novel supported by sensation; and a rare admission that the truth is true not because it happened, but because it was believed.
Complex and enigmatic; a book that defies both expectations and definition.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781644453902
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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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