A great addition to the literature of teenage angst.
Stanton’s graphic novel takes the form of a fictional teen’s diary chronicling a life-altering summer in the 1980s.
It’s June 1988, and Nick Pope has just finished his sophomore year of high school. He’s struggled with his mental health for years, but now he’s off his medication and out of therapy. He tells his large family that he’s doing better, but the tragic loss of someone close still affects him, as do the effects of bullying he suffers due to the pronounced birthmarks around his eyes. He plans to spend the summer working at his father’s movie theater, Wallflower, selling tickets and popcorn. The summer progresses with a balance of mild family drama and boredom until Nick receives the unexpected opportunity to show his artwork in a new gallery. Nick is wary at the prospect: “Sometimes if I tell people about stuff and then it doesn’t work out, it hurts EVEN MORE.” At the same time, he develops feelings for a charismatic artist from a nearby Catholic school, which forces him to confront long-standing questions about his sexuality. The work vividly re-creates the 1980s with nostalgic easter eggs; details like Nick’s sister April’s involvement with a man tied to the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign or a mention of the 1976 horror film Squirm ground the narrative, but the story never feels dated, nor do these nods to the time grow cloying. The evocation of teenage melancholy in Stanton’s prose is a delight to read: “I felt like melted vanilla ice cream. Plain and melted and not much of anything”; “I’ve been feeling pretty okay lately. I know the weather will change though.” Klecker’s black-and-white artwork, edged with a punk sensibility, complements Nick’s adolescent voice and masterfully illuminates his interior life without overwhelming the story. The text and illustrations authentically portray grief and mental health struggles in a way that speaks to the past as much as to today.
A great addition to the literature of teenage angst.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798245321523
Page Count: 141
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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