A comic masterpiece. The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves.
A rip-roaring political satire set in the near future, as the U.S. president takes aim at a third term.
Though his name is redacted at every occurrence, there’s no doubt as to the identity of the blustering social media addict at the center of this high-spirited romp, a welcome bolt of brilliantly zany fantasia for our grim and dour times. In fact, as the novel opens, the American public has had more than it can take of grim and dour, and is breaking out in droves of contagious weeping and wailing. An article written for a small online news site, The Dallas Daily, by an older Black journalist named Clarence Thomas, Jr. (no relation), describes how the first MAGA rally after the Supreme Court approved a third term was cut short by an outbreak of mass sobbing, followed by attacks on the weepers by their neighbors in the audience, followed by a violent police crackdown. “So now only everybody, literally everybodyin the world is waiting for a statement on last night’s clusterfuck, and Himself is bunkered in the Oval chugging Diet Coke and ripping people’s faces off.” We go behind the scenes with Faith Spack, 26, the president’s assistant communications director for special projects, an erstwhile reality TV star and the secret love child of a household-name billionaire who had an affair with her mom. As displayed in his great Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012), Fountain’s sweet spot is the intersection between reality TV and reality, an intellectual and comedic playground which extends here to the world of wrestling. A bout between an extraordinary wrestler named Rasputin and a somewhat lesser mortal named Ono Olympo is interrupted by a tsunami of weeping that overtakes the audience. Rasputin goes into the crowd, hugging each hysterical fan, leaving them "floating in a state that looks much like postcoital bliss." This results in an invitation to the White House and an offer to be the president’s running mate. Having established this wild scenario and these delightful main characters—Clarence, Faith, and Rasputin—Fountain goes on to have about as much fun as you can have with the 26 letters of the alphabet.
A comic masterpiece. The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781250776549
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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