More lovely work from Tyler, still vital and creative at 80.
In her 24th novel, Tyler once again unravels the tangled threads of family life.
This familiar subject always seems fresh in her hands because Tyler draws her characters and their interactions in such specific and revealing detail. Robin and Mercy Garrett and their three children seem oddly distanced from each other when we meet them during a 1959 summer vacation. Robin talks a lot about what everything costs, and Mercy is frequently absent painting the local landscape. Fifteen-year-old Lily is also not around much; deprived of her Baltimore boyfriend, she’s taken up with an older boy who bossy, judgmental older sister Alice is pleased to opine is only using her. Seven-year-old David rejects Robin’s attempts to get him in the water in favor of inventing elaborate storylines for the plastic GIs he’s recast as veterinarians. As usual, Tyler deftly sets the scene and broadly outlines characters who will change and deepen over time as the Garretts traverse 60 years; individual chapters offer the perspective of each parent and sibling (plus three members of the third generation). We need to get inside their heads, because the Garretts seldom discuss what’s really on their minds, the primary example being the fact that once David goes to college, Mercy gets a studio and eventually stops living with Robin altogether. All the children know, but since she appears for family gatherings—including a weird but moving surprise 50th anniversary party Robin throws—no one ever mentions it. Tyler gives the final word to David, who, like his mother, has maintained tenuous family ties while deliberately keeping his distance. Families are like the French braids that left their daughter’s hair in waves even after she undid them, he tells his wife: “You’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” It’s a characteristically homely, resonant metaphor from a writer who understands that the domestic world can contain the universe.
More lovely work from Tyler, still vital and creative at 80.Pub Date: March 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32109-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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