A compelling critique of the prison system with a few pacing and style issues.
In Smoot’s novel, the life of a man sentenced to prison for murder becomes intertwined with that of a woman leading a creative writing workshop at San Quentin.
James is a Black man who grows up in the 1980s in Northern California; Allison is a white woman who comes of age over a decade later in Indiana. After the drug-related death of his father, James and his mother move to a rough part of Oakland where the sound of gunfire keeps them up at night. James is a stellar student who rescues and adopts a former dog-fighting pit bull named Spike. No good deed goes unpunished, however; a former school bully (who had been bitten by Spike earlier) finds James and Spike and shoots the dog at point-blank range. James manages to disarm and kill his assailant; the cops find his fingerprints on the weapon, and he’s sentenced to prison. Allison, meanwhile, after coming to terms with her sexuality, earning a degree, and becoming a teacher, meets a woman and moves to Berkeley, where she becomes a volunteer writing tutor at the San Quentin prison. There, she meets James and reads his memoir-writing exercises, becoming more invested in him and his potential upcoming freedom as a parole hearing looms. Smoot’s novel insightfully explores problems within the justice system and follows two very likable protagonists. The choice to interrupt James’ narrative with Allison’s, however—especially in the early chapters—does not serve the novel well. James’ story—navigating the rough streets of Oakland, surviving prison, reliving the trauma of becoming a killer—is far more gripping. Allison’s rocket club adventures and sexual explorations, by contrast, are tonally jarring and impede the narrative momentum. Smoot’s book, as it moves across large spans of time (an entire adolescence, an entire prison sentence), can read more like a summary than a novel, and it occasionally trades in cliches: “Poetry is the beauty of water, earth, and fire.” Still, James’ story is compelling and affecting; it’s easy to see why Allison becomes so attached to him.
A compelling critique of the prison system with a few pacing and style issues.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781627206716
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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