An enjoyable trip back in time with two fascinating people from politics and letters that rings true historically.
Pizzo’s novella re-creates a day in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when Jackie Kennedy visited writer Gore Vidal.
Based on a paragraph from a 1961 newspaper, this short novel imagines a moment in history when the First Lady took the day off and met novelist and essayist Gore Vidal at his hotel in Provincetown. They were already friends, and also relatives, as they shared a stepfather. Gore was born at West Point and had a senator grandfather while Jackie was raised in polite Manhattan society and the Merrywood Estate in Virginia before attending Vassar. If America has landed gentry, they were members of it, though both characters come across as possible proponents of egalitarianism. Importantly, this day comes two years before Gore wrote a critical piece about Robert F. Kennedy in Esquire, after which Jackie never spoke to him again. In Provincetown, Jackie and Gore stroll to town and have a seafood pasta dinner. They discuss the White House renovations, the Kennedys’ meeting with Khrushchev (“Do you know Khrushchev sent the children a puppy?”), and a dinner at Versailles with Charles de Gaulle. For his part, Gore reminisces about family friend Amelia Earhart and talks about his current chums, such as Tennessee Williams. Between the two of them, they seem to know everyone, and the cool sophistication they possess comes across as refreshing rather than snobbish. For Jackie, this was a fun day away from the kids, while for Gore it was possibly his final encounter with Jackie before being shut out completely. Pizzo’s story, built around a single news item, is heavily researched and told in a way that seems more than plausible. Great care was taken to convey what Jackie’s early history and life at that time were like, and the voice used for her thoughts is convincing. Less time is spent on Gore, but the author deftly captures his lofty intellectualism, catty wit, and dislike of Truman Capote. Both were from privileged backgrounds but still had their problems, and reading about each in the company of a close friend is intriguing.
An enjoyable trip back in time with two fascinating people from politics and letters that rings true historically.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 9798574942581
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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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