An eye-opening chronicle of one man’s harrowing journey of self-discovery powered by perseverance, courage, and hope.
This first installment of Mushenye’s saga chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Luhya boy living in western Kenya and struggling to find his place in the world.
The narrative begins with shockingly immersive sequences that readers will not soon forget, if ever: A superstitious mother wants to cure her son Andayi of stuttering, so she hires a medicine man with alleged magic powers to “trim” his uvula. The surgery is as brutal as it is unsanitary—done with a bamboo stick with razor blades attached and no anesthesia—and the boy is lucky to survive. (“The moment he left me lying still, I started to breathe out slowly, desperately wishing and waiting for the searing pain to ease. It took a protracted interval to subdue the agony before I could even think of moving a muscle.”) The horrific incident pales, however, next to an even more traumatic experience soon thereafter. When Andayi’s older brother, Rono, leaves for a month-long ritualized retreat in a sacred forest that will supposedly make him a man, Andayi tricks his mother and secretly follows the group of boys Rono is with deep into the wilderness. He is eventually caught and forced to undergo the generations-long rite that will make him a man: circumcision. “As soon as I caught sight of the bloody knife at work on [my brother’s] bleeding rocket, the reality of what I was about to experience hit me like a bolt of lightning. My eyes shuddered with instant shock and terror. The rush of adrenaline was so sudden that they nearly popped out. As I struggled to comprehend the grisly torment, my brain sought to reboot and believe what I saw, but it didn’t work.” Surviving the “rocket-sculpting ritual,” as well as a month of revelatory education from adult mentors, makes Andayi a different person when he returns to his village—but he is still deeply flawed, embracing childish attitudes and behaviors like bullying, lying, and blaming others for his own inadequacies. When he flunks out of high school, he is faced with some troubling realizations—without the opportunities provided by a higher education, his future holds little promise. With his mother’s help, he reassesses his life and vows to, somehow, further his education in the land of plenty. (“I had no money and didn’t even know where America was.”)
There’s a genuineness, authenticity, and refreshing candor to Mushenye’s writing. The Kenyan-born novelist’s meticulous description of Luhya culture—its traditions and superstitions—is an undeniable strength, as is his main character’s relentless self-analysis and self-reflection. His story is a profound coming-of-age tale replete with numerous tidbits of wisdom along the way: “Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet. If you stretch your imagination beyond what you know or have seen, you will come across new opportunities.” The novel’s chief failing is its lack of a satisfying conclusion. The end of the book is more of a respite, a stopping point that sets up the second installment well but leaves readers hanging.
An eye-opening chronicle of one man’s harrowing journey of self-discovery powered by perseverance, courage, and hope.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 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
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