A mesmerizing novel, moving and intelligent.
A German teenager discovers his Jewish ancestry in 1933 just following Hitler’s ascendancy to power.
Hans Meyer is a 15-year-old in Berlin, the only child of a prosperous family. All around him he sees the increasingly violent rise of Nazi ideology—swastikas become prolific, books of allegedly un-German literature are burned, and the headmaster of his school, Herr Wullen, is arrested for neglecting to adequately adhere to the party line, while his teacher, Herr Wendell, is a Nazi fanatic who works his hateful ideology into every lesson. Hans’ instinct, at first, is to dismiss all this angry illiberalism as fleeting and assume that most will come to their senses and recognize the ritualistic humiliation of the Jewish population as “pointless exercises engineered out of prehistoric tribal biases that had no place in modern life.” But then the political turbulence invades his own life—he learns that his maternal grandparents were Jewish and converted to Christianity long ago. Once word is out, his mother, Anne, loses her job at a music conservatory. Also, he falls in love with classmate Rebecca Deichmann, who is openly Jewish, and is mercilessly bullied as a result. With impressive subtlety, Glants chronicles the moral darkening of German society as Hitler asserts his despotic grip over it and the grotesque choices this foisted upon so many. Hans is a memorable protagonist—wise and empathetic beyond his years but also, like any adolescent, afraid to swim against the current of peer pressure. His love for Rebecca is poignantly depicted by the author: “I was afraid to look at her lest my feelings overwhelm me. She was not classically beautiful, but her energy, her movements, and her daring words choked me whenever she was near.” However, the path of least resistance is depicted with great sensitivity and power, a vivid tableau from which this gripping novel draws much of its allure.
A mesmerizing novel, moving and intelligent.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9865985-1-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Anchor Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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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