A brief but memorable tale with prose that sings.
A lyrical historical novella about an elusive young Parisian woman who flees from her family and romantic relationships.
When Guy, a solitary banker, buys stolen roses from an 18-year-old “vagabond” named Emilie, they forge a tempestuous connection that binds them together for years. Though she now lives on the streets, the young woman is a member of one of the wealthiest families in the City of Light; she ran away as a child after the death of her parents in a train crash. Guy is enthralled with her after their first meeting, but after they become lovers, he finds that Emilie refuses most of the constrictions of Edwardian society, from corsets and hats to marriage. The traditionally minded Guy takes this as rejection, and after he impulsively abandons her at a train station, they’re separated forever, which tortures Guy for years. The novella gradually coalesces around the theme of the desire to define the people one loves in order make oneself feel safe. For Emilie, this is shown to feel like imprisonment, even though she longs for love. She continues to elude all who seek her—even her aunt and former nurse who’ve never forgotten their lost child. This novella is comprised of many poetic vignettes that come together for a tantalizing whole that still somehow feels incomplete, as if the reader is searching, and failing, to find Emilie. The chapters are told in a series of intimate stream-of-consciousness first-person perspectives, as in this narration from Guy: “I construct a play without words because I have said nothing to you, and you, in turn, have said nothing to me. Where in this universe are you that I should know your lost language?” All the characters feel like brief sketches except for Emilie herself, and some chapters are figments of her imagination. Indeed, the story circles her like a haunting dream, with imagery taking precedence over plot.
A brief but memorable tale with prose that sings.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781737521945
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Tattered Script Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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