Astute, keen-eyed musings on lives well lived—and otherwise.
The protagonists in Sittenfeld’s second collection of short stories look back—with mixed emotions.
Though the characters here are largely middle-aged men and women reflecting on marriage, career, and friendship, few encounter anything as dramatic as a midlife crisis; these are tales of midlife contemplation. In “The Richest Babysitter in the World,” a professor finds joy in her own comparatively ordinary life even as she recalls turning down a job offer from a then-unknown Jeff Bezos–esque figure; in “Follow-Up,” an attorney awaiting medical test results reminisces about a hookup in law school. Sittenfeld’s characters—including Lee Fiora, the protagonist of her debut novel, Prep (2005), who reappears here in “Lost but Not Forgotten”—typically see the world with an almost hypervigilant level of scrutiny. Cutting remarks or seemingly innocuous gestures take on outsize meanings; characters analyze their own and others’ social positions through the prisms of wealth, artistic talent, physical attractiveness, and celebrity. Happily, the once-insecure Lee has mellowed considerably, and though her powers of observation, honed during four agonizing years at a New England prep school, haven’t been blunted, they’re no longer tinged by self-loathing. Sittenfeld’s politically themed novels have been wildly popular, and several stories use politics and contemporary issues as jumping-off points for sharp insights on human nature. “A for Alone” follows an artist attempting to make sense of the “Mike Pence rule” (the former vice president’s policy of avoiding one-on-one time with women other than his wife), while “White Women LOL” features a protagonist who displays a stunning lack of self-awareness for a Sittenfeld character—a woman dubbed “Vodka Vicky” after a video of her attempting to oust a group of Black people from a bar goes viral. While the lack of resolution of several entries may frustrate some readers, Sittenfeld’s candor and matter-of-factness make for compellingly intimate and at times wildly funny reading.
Astute, keen-eyed musings on lives well lived—and otherwise.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593446737
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
