An eccentric, ultimately moving novel of an expat Irish family in turmoil.
An Irish family in Canada faces a stark generational choice.
Hoff’s impressive fiction debut centers on the O’Brien family in New Brunswick, Canada. Mr. O’Brien is garrulous and tries to be optimistic, holding court at The Donnybrook, the local pub, every day, and Mrs. O’Brien is sharp and forceful, haunted by the fact that all of her many children but one died very early (“Three boys and five girls buried one after the other in the churchyard, none living long enough to open their eyes to see, or their mouths to cry”). Tended by servants, the couple lives in a fine house with their only daughter, Mary-Kate, a high-spirited, bookish young woman who’s continuously being proffered by her father to all the eligible or semi-eligible men in the town of Tnúth. Mary-Kate is the book’s most complex dramatic creation, and the subject of her matrimonial future is a contentious one. Years ago, Mrs. O’Brien made a rash promise to her sister-in-law, Sister Mary-Frances, pledging one of her children to religious orders, and Sister Mary-Frances is determined to collect (“The long line of O’Briens was coming to an end,” we’re told, “and she wanted to make sure it finished with some dignity”). Hoff adds to these charged premises a third storyline that’s customarily a staple of comedy rather than drama: Mrs. O’Brien’s quarrelsome mother (referred to by her son-in-law as “Our Lady of Blessed Misery” and called by her daughter simply “Herself”), having just recently buried her husband, has decided to come and live with the O’Briens. Hoff animates this tale of over-the-top family dysfunction with wit, considerable writing skills (at one point we read “There was enough blue in the sky to cut out a pair of pants”), and deadpan humor (“I’m not ignoring you,” one character tells another, “I’m just pretending you’re not here”). And the very human pathos of the novel is always present but never heavy-handed, with even the most outlandish characters written to a fine shade of believability.
An eccentric, ultimately moving novel of an expat Irish family in turmoil.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9812215-0-2
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Black Crow Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
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
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