Dazzling and impassioned, this novel evokes history from a perspective often overlooked—that of its survivors.
Two friends grow up in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War, but follow very different paths in the war’s aftermath.
In 1966, Mai is 13 years old, leading a pampered existence in a traditional Confucian household in Saigon. In spite of daily media reminding her that her country is at war, Mai is largely sheltered by both her privilege and a willed propensity to “[remember] what she wanted to remember.” Such is the power of Mai’s determination that, in spite of the powerful impact of witnessing a monk self-immolate in protest against religious persecution and the bombing of Saigon in 1968, her adolescence is largely untroubled until she accidentally witnesses her father seducing his young student Mai Ly. Mai responds by entering into her own sexual liaisons with gleeful abandon, specifically with the American soldiers who hang out on Catinat Boulevard. Unlike Mai, Mai Ly had a childhood defined by privation. Her mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident when she was 4 and her father's family was massacred in My Lai, potentially by the same G.I.s who now frequent his street-corner beer stand. In 1975, the fall of Saigon finds Mai abandoning her baby in an orphanage as she flees on one of the last helicopters out of the city. Meanwhile, Mai Ly, who has served as a spy and armed combatant for the Viet Cong, returns to her home in triumph, ready to celebrate their liberation with a people who, shockingly to her, do not feel liberated at all. As the aftermath of the war unspools, the novel follows the fortunes of Mai; Mai Ly; Michael, one of Mai’s G.I. lovers, who's African American; their son, Nat; and many others as they navigate futures which must be lived in the light of their complicated pasts. This book is a capacious read but its conversational style, evocative characters, and penchant for very short, episodic chapters keep the reader from feeling bogged down by either the heft of its pages or the ambition of its scope.
Dazzling and impassioned, this novel evokes history from a perspective often overlooked—that of its survivors.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781771838276
Page Count: 467
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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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