A seductively crafted and deeply fallible work—and a classic.
An exquisite new translation of the volume Colette referred to, on multiple occasions, as “my best book.”
A narrator who resembles her author both in name and occupation guides readers through the sexual proclivities and shades of gender expression that populated belle epoque Paris (with a brief digression to Georgian-era Wales). In cafes, cabarets, and opium dens, she introduces us to what translator Careau calls “the sexual underworld”: lesbians and gay men, women who dress in men’s clothing, a sneering, misogynist Don Juan, and others—many of whom wouldn’t have used the same language to describe themselves that we use now. (Careau believes that at least one of those cross-dressing women would likely have been a transgender man if she’d lived in our own time.) And as Careau notes in her informative if occasionally stiff foreword, the book itself evades categorization of all sorts—it’s neither pure fiction nor nonfiction, and that narrator is a lot coyer than Colette’s own life might lead us to believe. For periods of time, Colette dressed in men’s clothing and took women lovers, but you wouldn’t know it based on this account alone. Her descriptions can seem harshly—even cruelly—outdated: Of a circle of gay men, she writes, “I will carefully avoid saying that they were not manly.” Of the cross-dressing women, she accepts without complaint this question from an interlocutor: “What’s more ridiculous, and sadder, than a…simulated man?” But it’s never entirely clear where Colette’s irony ends and her sincerity begins—nor who might be considered “pure” or “impure.” As Careau notes, Colette’s work would have been wildly broad-minded at the time—and for the most part, her tone is more sympathetic than cutting, eager to unravel the many, many different layers of “my favorite form of brutality, love.” As a whole, it’s best read not as a comprehensive guide to gender and sexual desire but as a singular account—one that was very much of its own time and yet, paradoxically, far out in front of it.
A seductively crafted and deeply fallible work—and a classic.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781324075233
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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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