A taut and compelling psychological tale.
A therapist gets drawn into an insidious program for traumatized veterans in this debut novel.
Linda Held is a single mother and early-career psychotherapist who isn’t interested in letting ethical concerns get in the way of her helping her clients. That’s what attracted her to the vaguely named “United Syndicates of Federal Assistance, Worldwide,” which runs the SoldierWell program, a private therapy initiative for veterans experiencing acute PTSD. Her clients are definitely in need of help. Pvt. Carl Boxer is a guilt-ridden soldier whose traumatic experience as a war zone driver led him to attack an Army chaplain (though he has no memory of doing so). Participation in SoldierWell is all that saved him from being court-martialed. Even worse is Marine Sgt. Todd Sparrow, a narcissist and potential sociopath with war crimes on his rap sheet. Linda is prepared to blur the normal boundary lines between patient and therapist to produce results—her early research is in the potential benefits of patient transference—but it soon becomes clear that the ethical standards of her employers are far looser (and darker) than even she imagined. As it turns out, USoFA’s plans for the vets in Linda’s care don’t necessarily involve fixing them. The deeper Linda immerses herself in the program, the more she realizes that she might not be helping to mitigate the effects of America’s “forever war” but simply keeping the machine primed and running. Mixing traditional narration with extended transcripts from therapy sessions, Clancy builds his world with unsettling precision. It’s a novel that leans heavily into psychology, and the characters are wonderfully (and sometimes horribly) drawn. “I can’t remember how I came to lead but I’m sure it had something to do with the way I carried myself,” says Todd to Linda, explaining what he perceives as his own natural leadership abilities. “I have what they call ‘command presence,’ if that’s a term you’re familiar with. That’s just how I see myself, and I’m confident others see me that way.” Readers may be suffering from “forever war” fatigue at this current moment of history, but the author’s parable is more than incisive political commentary. It’s an evergreen story of human frailty and this increasingly dystopian world.
A taut and compelling psychological tale.Pub Date: April 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-4-294-29897-8
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Montag Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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