A sensitive, empathetic, sometimes humorous, and always authentic tale.
Nolos’ novel navigates two young people’s experiences as trans men in New York City.
In 2015, Lis Olsson is an acting major at an unnamed Manhattan college, dating a cute theater major named Tyler Thomas. The young student’s life is going smoothly, but its placid surface has some ripples lately. Lis secretly binges YouTube videos by trans men about transitioning, and when Lis meets a charismatic man at a Brooklyn drag show, it makes them realize that they’re only attached to Tyler, as “one might be to a utility knife.” Ty Wacek, the man Lis encounters at the show, is fascinating and cool; he’s had top and bottom surgery, and he lets her try on one of his old chest binders. But although he has a steady office job and appears to have his life together, Ty is perpetually anxious; he’s insecure about his small size and worries that people will trip and fall if he doesn’t always remove debris from stairs. He’s also stressed by the burdensome effort it takes to refill his testosterone prescription. The story zigzags between 2015 and 2017; in the earlier year, Lis and Ty tentatively reach for connection until their relationship derails. Two years later, Ty finds the newly transitioned Lis (now named Nat) exasperating and desperately in need of “charm school for baby trannies.” They’ve become roommates and are in the same friend group, but that only heightens the already existing discomfort. Nolos, a trans author who, like Ty, sometimes performs at Brooklyn drag shows, realistically brings to life a group of queer, artistically inclined young New Yorkers searching for identity. He portrays them as part of a small urban community—so small, in fact, that Ty, at one point, matches with Lis’ first roommate on Tinder. The two main characters are flawed in relatable ways; Lis simply avoids the too-nice Tyler instead of officially breaking up with him, and both Lis and Ty are frequently irritated by those around them. Their emotional vulnerabilities will make readers root for their success, however.
A sensitive, empathetic, sometimes humorous, and always authentic tale.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798989313907
Page Count: 226
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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