An enjoyable experiment that almost works.
Three new stories about Uhtred, protagonist of Cornwell’s Last Kingdom series, each preceded by historical background material and followed by recipes.
Uhtred of Bebbanburg looks back as an old man on some of his adventures in the ninth century as Englaland went through its “long and brutal” coalescence into the kingdom of England. At age 8, Uhtred is already hearing his father tell him he is useless if he cannot fight. But the wee lad must also trap eels from the local creek, because his father loves to eat them. When the child is ambushed and robbed of his catch by other children, he must fight his enemy with a wooden sword. The stories are light on plot, serving mostly as vehicles to show what people ate. Cornwell and his collaborator, Suzanne Pollak, who crafted the recipes based on Anglo-Saxon fare, clearly enjoyed themselves researching and writing this unusual hybrid of history, fiction, and cookbook. Pork chops with apples sounds tasty, but do you really, really want a two-page recipe for eel pie? Or for fermented shredded turnip? The historical background chapters offer plenty of interesting nuggets; for example, the fact that people generally drank ale because it was safer than water. Few characters other than Uhtred get much development, but his pungent narration offers plenty of meat. By the time of his reminiscences, he has long since become a confirmed pagan, but he recalls that as a boy he was “scared into a belief in the nailed god because [he] knew no better.” Asked at one point if King Alfred should be declared a saint, he sardonically replies that “as a young man Alfred went through the kitchen maids like a hot seax through butter! He even had a bastard son by one of them”—Uhtred himself. The concept of showing what people ate a thousand years ago is appealing, but adding detailed recipes (for example, “Preheat the oven to 220ºC/425ºF/gas 7” to roast fennel just right) would seem to limit the book’s audience drastically. The stories themselves need to be more eventful and provide greater challenges for Uhtred; the historical background would work better if it were woven into the fiction rather than unloaded in stand-alone sections. That said, Cornwell’s prose is a pleasure to read, and the food facts are fun.
An enjoyable experiment that almost works.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780063219366
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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
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
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