A contemporary poetic novel for audiences who love strong female characters.
A poet breaks free from her past experiences in Parrish’s novel.
Sam is a 30-something poet finally pursuing the college degree she promised herself she would earn, but the experience lacks luster. Her new boyfriend, Steven, a professor from her program, has a research grant to go to Boston; moving there seems like a promising new start and a way to gain clarity about what she wants to do with her life, but Sam keeps getting dragged back into her past. Her alcoholic ex-boyfriend Timothy is still a fixture, as are the memories of a difficult childhood spent living under the eye of her abusive grandmother that keep threatening to surface. In Boston, Sam finds her creative need to write poetry comes second to Steven’s work; she finds solace in new friend Martin Alistair, son of legendary feminist publisher Edith Alistair. Sam reads Edith’s diaries about her publishing house—part of Steven’s research that he seems surprised she is fascinated by—while simultaneously writing poetry. From the novel’s opening line (“Happiness was a shock. So was knowing she belonged”), Parrish writes lyrically, conveying the creativity of her heroine while also displaying her own skill as a published poet. This is particularly evident as Sam works through a recurring motif of her childhood trauma, turning a terrible memory into an affecting poem. Though both Timothy and Steven feature heavily in the story (occasionally, it feels a little unclear as to whether they are meant to present a love triangle for Sam), the most compelling aspect of the narrative is the central character’s journey as she finds her footing and truly addresses her own needs. Readers will find themselves rooting for Sam, a woman in her 30s, as if this is her coming-of-age tale.
A contemporary poetic novel for audiences who love strong female characters.Pub Date: June 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781963115970
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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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