A fascinating historical drama.
A witch hunter must come to terms with the repercussions of his actions in Fearns’ historical novel.
In 1545, Geneva city magistrate Henry Aubert—a deeply religious man who lost his entire family to the plague—is summoned by John Calvin and tasked with trying witches in a small community. On his way to the assignment, Henry encounters Louise de Peney; she is a pretty young woman and a former nun, now a healer. Henry is intrigued by her. He begins investigating witchcraft, and, via torture, he manages to get a confession from the husband of an accused woman, but injures him so badly he must send for Louise. Louise doesn’t think much of his interrogation methods; still, she believes he is a good man and tries to warn him off his quest (“How many witches can there be? It is a sorry business, and it will destroy you. There can be no happy ending to this, whatever the truth”). The plot thickens when several women in town are accused of participating in a satanic ritual and arrested. As Henry continues with his work, Louise challenges his worldview, arguing that the women he is accusing of witchcraft are no more guilty of heresy than he is. Henry cares for her, but has trouble agreeing. When Louise is inevitably accused of witchcraft, everything Henry believes is thrown into question. There is a compelling tension in Henry between his desire for sex and his piety that, in his eyes, casts any interest in women as sinful. But his absolutism is constantly challenged as he struggles to fulfill his mission and questions whether he should adhere to his faith or adjust based on what he has learned. Louise is a fascinating character, too; she’s smart and well read (better read than Henry). Louise understands what is happening better than Henry does—she knows the accused women are only guilty of being women. Henry is a bit naïve, and although that changes as the novel progresses, he also remains anchored in Calvinist thinking, leading to a tragic ending. The narrative provides a deep look into the fear of witchcraft, underscoring how gender and sex were at the heart of it.
A fascinating historical drama.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2023
ISBN: 978-1958228272
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Quill & Crow Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2023
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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