A perceptive and sensitive fictional account of the life of a Japanese gay man in the early 20th century.
In Lessik’s novel (based on a true story), a father shares his life story with a daughter he’s never met.
The author uses an ancestor’s story as inspiration for this existential novel. Kenzo Uchida is the son of a Japanese diplomat who was absent from his life. While in college, Kenzo commits to his partner, Mitsu Katayama, and later takes him along on his postings as he follows the same career path as his father. In Constantinople in 1919, he’s the Japanese consul general and enjoys a full social life. He’s advised by Edmund Kinver, the British deputy ambassador, to obtain a female companion to hide his same-sex relationship, and Ukrainian immigrant Elisa Dobrovska agrees to fulfill this role. In Paris, the trio befriend artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and attend jazz and ballet performances. Then tragedy strikes, and Kenzo suffers extreme grief. Elisa supports him and saves him from some sticky situations, and their relationship goes to a place that has lasting consequences. He doesn’t find out until years later that he has a daughter. After suffering further loss, Kenzo studies Zen Buddhism and embarks on a very different career. During World War II, he goes to visit his child for the first time. When he finds himself in a life-threatening situation, he writes an autobiographical account addressed to her. Lessik’s effective use of flashbacks allows Kenzo to tell his story fully, analyzing past events with the wisdom of hindsight as well as offering asides to his daughter. These elements imbue the already lively narrative with a depth of feeling and, often, a sense of poignancy. Kenzo experiences several important events during the interwar years, and he engagingly acts as a witness to 1920s Paris, growing militancy in Japan, and the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. He also writes frankly about his sexuality, his ancestry, and his growing awareness of how others have perceived both. Ultimately, the protagonist teaches his daughter, and readers, about the importance of meditation and a Zen way of life.
A perceptive and sensitive fictional account of the life of a Japanese gay man in the early 20th century.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781608642861
Page Count: 322
Publisher: REBEL SATORI PRESS
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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