A sprawling critique of so-called polite society.
An epic way-we-live-now social novel set in a rapidly corroding London.
Campbell Flynn, the center of O’Hagan’s multivalent satire, is a public intellectual admired for his books on fine art, writing regularly for high-toned opinion and fashion magazines. To make a quick buck, he dashes off a self-help book, Why Men Weep in Their Cars, but to avoid being seen as associated with such déclassé work, he schemes to have an actor pose as its author. From this modest bit of deceit and money-grubbing, O’Hagan spins a heady but credible tale that includes street toughs, immigrants, British aristocrats, political leaders, Russian oligarchs, human traffickers, and the worlds of media, art, and fashion. To educate himself on youth culture and the world beyond his social set, Campbell confers with one of his students, Milo Mangasha, who hacks into Campbell’s private life and unearths a host of seamy associates; various crises and tragedies ensue in the year that follows. O’Hagan’s clearest model for this high-and-low worlds-in-collision tale is Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, and O’Hagan shares Wolfe’s gift for delivering a panoply of unique characters and clearly outlining their motives. The novel has its flaws: O’Hagan’s eagerness to tick the box of every element of contemporary life, from Bitcoin to drill music to deepfakes, demands some forced connections. (Milo’s girlfriend’s brother is connected to a human trafficking scheme; Campbell’s friend is married to a firebrand columnist, and their son is a shrill environmental activist.) The comeuppances are generally predictable, and while Wolfe’s manic style highlighted how greedy and hubristic his characters were, O’Hagan’s approach is more sober and at times drowsier. Still, there’s no doubting the scope of his ambition; when future generations seek to understand post-pandemic Britain, this will be one of the first places they look.
A sprawling critique of so-called polite society.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781324074878
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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
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
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