A deeply felt and pitch-perfect continuation that lets its title character finally come into her own.
In this elegant and expansive sequel to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), McVeigh revisits Austen’s moral world with deft humor and surprising emotional gravity.
Two years after the death of Col. Brandon, Marianne Dashwood—once the embodiment of romantic impetuosity—has become a 20-year-old widow, uncertain of her future. In London, she finds herself drawn back into the orbit of high society. McVeigh sets the tone from the opening pages as a wary Lady Catherine de Bourgh coolly observes of Marianne, “Her air is not unattractive…one sees a great many worse.” Such dry Austenian prose pervades the novel. Marianne’s journal entries alternate with omniscient narration, giving readers access to a protagonist still marked by passion but tempered by loss. At concerts, teas, and country houses, she navigates encounters with old acquaintances—some welcome, others far less so—and meets new figures, among them the quick-witted, morally ambiguous Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park fame. Their exchanges, full of intellectual play and emotional charge, capture the delicate balance between propriety and longing. McVeigh resurrects not only Marianne’s sensibility but also the moral texture of Austen’s entire world. John Willoughby, flattered by “the coolness of Marianne’s reception,” convinces himself that his abandonment of her had been “far from uncommon,” yet his self-justification only deepens the portrait of moral blindness that Austen once sketched in miniature. When Marianne encounters him again later, McVeigh’s command of tension is exquisite. The encounter unfolds amid music, light, and memory, until “it felt strangely natural to lean upon Willoughby’s arm…’tis dangerous work to walk in the half-light with your first love, with time and all the dead between you.” The narrative scope broadens with the inclusion of other Austen characters, yet these crossings feel organic, not contrived. Mary Crawford’s reappearance provides an unexpected and deeply moving counterpoint: “My hope for this world is over, indeed,” she says quietly, “but I have every hope, my friend, for the world that is still to come.” It’s one of the novel’s most striking lines—simple, graceful, and devastating.
A deeply felt and pitch-perfect continuation that lets its title character finally come into her own.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781738546169
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Warleigh Hall Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 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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