A faltering but ultimately valuable novel about a man trying to live his life to the fullest.
An ordinary life is disrupted by debilitating anxiety in Mesler’s semiautobiographical novel.
In 1990, when Col Merrysee first meets Cara Bedwell while working at a Memphis independent bookstore, he immediately knows that he’s going to marry her someday. Their romance blossoms immediately, as Cara is charmed by Col’s oddness and quirky creativity. They begin to pursue a relationship while working at the bookstore together, and she becomes like a mother to Col’s son.Cara and Col eventually get married and have a child of their own; they buy the bookstore from the original owners, and, although they have some money troubles, they manage to make things work with the help of the city’s local literary community. But then Col’s lifelong chronic anxiety gets worse, which has a devastating effect on his daily life. On a trip, he has a panic attack—a traumatic event that sticks with him long afterward. Indeed, life only gets more difficult from there: Soon, Col is unable to go grocery shopping, get to work, or, eventually, leave his house most days, due to his severe agoraphobia. He attends therapy, which he finds enlightening, if not always helpful, but he misses major life events and struggles with feeling inadequate as a father and husband. Through it all, Cara and the rest of Col’s family are there for him, and he learns to appreciate the good days when they come, instead of only focusing on what he sees as his failures.
Mesler’s work is about the effects that agoraphobia has on everyday life. It isn’t an easy book to approach, as the author’s casual writing style can feel off-putting at first, especially when the reader doesn’t already know or care about his fictional stand-in, Col Merrysee. There’s an almost apologetic nature to the writing style, as when Mesler writes, “I think I have used the word story too much. I will look for synonyms,” which makes the work feel like notes in a first draft, rather than a fully formed novel. However, as Mesler really gets into the meat of the story, and particularly Col’s struggle with agoraphobia, he moves away from such self-conscious asides and lets the reader into his protagonist’s struggle. What follows is a funny and heartrending account, by turns, of an ordinary life that’s constantly disrupted by anxiety and its effects. When Mesler draws back the curtain on what it feels like for Col to not be a full part of his family’s life, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for him. One of the most touching and saddening moments is when Col’s young daughter has to go to the hospital, but he can’t accompany her because he finds himself unable leave the house. Equally affecting is when Col has a personal triumph near the end of the novel, achieving something that he thought to be impossible. It’s in these moments that this story comes alive.
A faltering but ultimately valuable novel about a man trying to live his life to the fullest.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781604894349
Page Count: -
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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