A mixed bag of stories and poems that, at their strongest, are affecting and insightful.
In Collenette’s collection of poetry and short stories, a series of men contend with disappointment, death, and heartbreak as they attempt to find and preserve love.
Over the course of 37 pieces, the author tells tales of varyingly hapless men as they attempt to navigate their way through a series of relationships they can’t quite grasp. “WTF?” sees an all-male rowing crew helping their teammate repair his marriage. “Ingling” follows an English expatriate living in California as he contends with his wife and mother vying for the role of family matriarch. Both “Mister Speedy” and “Two Left Feet and a Motorcycle” feature men who take out personal ads after getting dumped. After finding his footing in his first few stories, the author begins to explore the nuances of the relationships that his male narrators and protagonists, for the most part, fight to maintain. In “Scent,” Jason and Emily’s love is able to live on—albeit briefly—after the latter’s sudden death in a train crash. Collenette explores the complicated ties between parents and their children in “You Never Know When,” “Angelface,” and “Gray.” Poems interspersed throughout explore various subjects, such as using science as a metaphor for love and death in “String Theory” and the relationship between reader and writer in “Body of Work.” Many stories find their emotional power in endings and reminiscences; relationships end and people die, but Collenette’s characters live on in memories. The collection closes with a reminder to hold loved ones close in “Fragile.”
The author sometimes straightforwardly explores how men try—and often fail—to recognize the experiences and struggles of women. In “Shame,” for instance, a man attending a writers’ workshop full of women apologizes for what so many men have put women through, and he’s surprised to find his words recognized and understood. This is an intriguing premise, although such dramatic embellishments run the risk of flattening characterization and deadening nuances that, at other points, stories manage to capture. In “The Suitcase,” for example, Simon’s inability to perceive his own failings while actively judging those of others is both humorous and relatable, but the car salesman in “Paradise Motors” feels more like a parody than a person. Many poems lack clarity and resonance. There are moments of genuine emotional insight in the stories, though, particularly when the author addresses parenthood and family. Readers see one father recall stories that he used to read to his now-grown daughter, another attempt to shield his child from the reality of his wife’s cancer, and another struggle to connect with a son who’s ashamed of him: “Kevin. Son, I know you aren’t very proud of your old man. I know that. Me neither, truth told.” Such moments sting with the halting love of a strained relationship that neither side seems able to change, and this—more than differences in gender or absurdities of male misunderstanding—is where the true heart of the collection appears to lie.
A mixed bag of stories and poems that, at their strongest, are affecting and insightful.Pub Date: July 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798218738945
Page Count: 228
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2025
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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