A drawn-out but thought-provoking look at American malaise.
A novel focuses on race and class in America.
Grandma Ollie is intense. Between sips of Southern Comfort, she explains the shortcomings of religion and consumerism. She is keen on pointing out all that is “vain and superficial.” She is hip with Marx, Nietzsche, and the artistic struggle that consumed Beethoven. In long statements, she imparts her world-weary knowledge to her younger relative Simon. Simon, a small boy for his age, takes in Ollie’s teachings. Of course, they fail to help him much in his own life. His parents’ behaviors range from useless to violent, and the wider world has little interest in showing him much kindness. Fast-forward to Simon the adult. He is unhappily married and lives in Minneapolis. He is a “rare black Trump supporter” yet his fellow Republicans think little of him. They even falsely accuse him of inciting a riot at a Donald Trump rally despite Simon’s being the victim of the violence. Though Simon carries Ollie’s wisdom, “his acerbic and unhappy disposition smothered everything. To his wife, he was perpetually discontent.” Smart as he is, no one really likes Simon. And unfortunately, there isn’t much about him to like. Although McCoy’s epilogue decries more traditional novels as being “saccharine” and lacking intellectual worth, some traditional storytelling would have heightened this book’s impact. The characters have a lot to say, and much of what they discuss provides food for thought. As Ollie points out, one of the problems in breaking the mold of the status quo is figuring out how to discredit consumer culture’s respectability. Yet most of the players speak in such a protracted fashion (“A Rosie Consumer flourishes when the mind is least consulted and where little premium is placed on great imagination”) that following the tale can prove a bit tiring. Nevertheless, the story has its potent moments. Certain scenes shine, including one featuring some gambling men “with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go.” Many indelible points are ultimately made even if they are not always easy to acknowledge.
A drawn-out but thought-provoking look at American malaise.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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