A profound and moving treatment of what could have been a tabloid topic.
Not making this up: Famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker were married to Sarah and Adelaide Yates, a pair of sisters in the Civil War–era South, where they produced 21 children between them.
The original, eponymous Siamese twins—they were from Siam (now Thailand) before their mother sold them to the circus—have inspired many works of fiction and nonfiction, but Kline’s eighth novel may be the first written by one of their distant relatives. In her hands, it becomes a riveting and insightful story that is as much about sisterhood and the Civil War as about the prurient details of the marital arrangements. Clearly aware that one of the biggest imaginative challenges is depicting the way these four people maintained their dignity under the challenging circumstances—Chang and Eng were joined by a band of flesh at their abdomen, and separation would have killed both of them—Kline’s choice to focus on the experience of one of the sisters, Sallie, succeeds beautifully. The marriage was not her idea. Her sister, Addie, and Chang were the infatuated couple and she and Eng were the ride-alongs, but Sallie’s options were limited by a scandal in her teens. Kline manages to shift our attention from the awkward mechanics to deeper, more interesting issues: the fact that two men who had themselves lived as property now made their living as slaveholders, the increasingly opposed views of the sisters on that matter, and other tensions among the foursome as they raised an annually growing family of infants and children in close quarters. As much as Chang and Eng quarrel, Addie and Sallie don’t do much better—diametrically opposed approaches to child-rearing lead to a dramatic change in their living arrangements. Once war breaks out, Kline hits her stride, compellingly and convincingly depicting the Southern experience as bravado shaded slowly, then utterly, into devastating loss.
A profound and moving treatment of what could have been a tabloid topic.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9780063097995
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
