An intriguing and ghostly but ultimately hazy tale of grief and memory.
In this literary novel, a woman alone on her family’s farm becomes trapped in a cycle of memories.
Mazie Mills has returned to the family farm—the vacation spot she loved as a child, where, she remembers, “there was no ‘supposed to’.…Just be.” Alone on the property, she is befriended by elderly neighbor Lula, who takes daily walks through the farm’s orchard. Lula begins to stop by every morning for a game of gin rummy, and Mazie starts to tell her stories about her family. She talks about a road trip to California, how she always had the worst seat at the table, and how she has never eaten an apple from the orchard that tasted any good. Lula, who rarely speaks about herself, listens kindly to Mazie’s memories and offers helpful analysis. But a number of things haunt Mazie, including her early, intense relationship with her high school boyfriend, Sean; a dream she has in which she died; her wedding, which took place on that very farm; and her husband, Eddie. Why is Mazie here alone? And why can’t she quite remember how she got here? Is it possible that she may be dead? Monier’s prose is lyrical and measured, deftly evoking the dreamlike qualities of the setting through Mazie’s eyes: “The short step down from the porch, my bare foot on the hot summer grass, I am hit by a wall of humidity. The full, fertile feel of the air that marks a Pennsylvania mountain summer. Thick, wet, ripe with a steaming, green life.” But the book is a bit too dreamy, both in its premise and its presentation. The first third, which mostly deals with Mazie’s relationship with Sean, is quite gripping, but as soon as the otherworldly element is introduced on Page 50, every scene has the ephemeral quality of a dream sequence. Readers will have trouble taking these scenes seriously, and the novel quickly treads into the clichéd Hollywood territory of false realities and gauzy interior worlds. Despite her clear talent, the author has not constructed enough of a story—one rooted in reality, with genuine stakes and authentic characters—to keep readers invested.
An intriguing and ghostly but ultimately hazy tale of grief and memory.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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