Of some interest to readers of contemporary Arabic literature.
Egyptian novelist and jurist El-Ashmawi delivers an allegorical tale of religious strife in a desert backwater.
Tayea Village isn’t much of a place, as Nader Fayez Kamal discovers on arriving. The most interesting thing about the farming backwater is its name, which honors a former mayor but which the inhabitants mispronounce: “They called it Tayha, as in the lost soul, instead of the obedient one.” The “lost soul” sobriquet is fitting, for, explains a villager with the redolent name of Ramses Iskander, the house in which Nader, a public prosecutor, has been billeted is said to be haunted by the ghost of a British colonial officer, and in the wake of the resulting curse some of its previous Muslim inhabitants abandoned the town, which was then settled by Christians. One such lost soul wanders into Tayea about the same time Nader does, a woman named Hoda Yusef Habib, who, raped by her stepfather, has been married off to a brutish, abusive older man. Now a widow—or so she thinks—Hoda assumes a Coptic identity and hides in open sight, in the bargain revealing healing powers reminiscent of the biblical tale of Lazarus. Those powers don’t extend to keeping peace between Christians and Muslims, however, and El-Ashmawi’s story becomes one of grinding vendettas, lawsuits, and murders, with a leavening of sardonic magic realism in the vein more of Dürrenmatt than García Márquez. Much of the story can be read as a thinly veiled critique of the last years of the Mubarak regime, marked by sectarian violence and official corruption. The characters are too thinly developed to carry much weight. Nader, though committed to justice, is both weak and shallow: He carries a gun without bullets and lives in fear of a call from his distant but demanding fiancee, while Hoda, strong and resolute, pays a terrible price “simply because she wanted to live,” an outcome that can be predicted well before the book’s end.
Of some interest to readers of contemporary Arabic literature.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781649032546
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Hoopoe
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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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