A lively, if slightly shapeless, novel of Windy City life.
Allen’s debut novel follows a teenage boy and a priest with a shadowy past through a Chicago neighborhood in flux.
On the South Side of Chicago in 1970, Gary “Weezer” O’Donnell is just a kid, but he feels as if he’s on the cusp of manhood. It’s the summer after seventh grade, and he resolves that he’s done with childish things—so much so, in fact, that he maliciously tells his young friend that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus during a street hockey game. Father Tom Mallon is a 30-something priest from the neighborhood who has a troubled past; his former life as a gambler casts a shadow over his present, as his parishes have had a habit of unexpectedly coming up short on funds. Tensions are rising in the all-White neighborhood, as a local group of neo-Nazis, whom Weezer immediately distrusts, makes some racist residents willing to resort to violence to maintain the segregated status quo. As Tom grapples with his complicated past, Weezer attempts to navigate his confusing present, which is leading him down a potentially dangerous path. Allen’s enthusiastic prose skillfully captures the setting’s variety and drama, as when Weezer takes in the people at a White Sox game: “There were couples on dates, families, groups of boys and girls by themselves, old wrinkly men in straw hats….These were people that Weezer didn’t see in his neighborhood….He wanted to walk up to the old man in the straw hat and ask him, where was he from?” The plot is episodic, bouncing back and forth between Weezer and Tom and between the 1970s of the present and the 1950s of Tom’s youth. Although the book captures something of the feel of the neighborhood at the time, readers may wish for a more unified story. Overall, Weezer’s and Tom’s narratives feel cobbled together somewhat arbitrarily, and it’s not entirely clear why they’ve been paired together. Still, Chicagoans, in particular, are sure to enjoy aspects of this slice-of-life work.
A lively, if slightly shapeless, novel of Windy City life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Purpletooth Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2023
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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