A vibrant, gritty urban character study rich in cultural relevance, social gravitas, and interpersonal drama.
A diverse community of young men struggles with challenging queer realities in this novel.
Author and former social worker Ambrose crafts a moving profile of racial unrest and social injustice through an ethnic melting pot of young gay men living and loving in Philadelphia. Headlining the action is Babe, a queer Black youth with a “mass of thick dreadlocks” raised in the predominantly White Pennsylvania suburbs. He yearns to live a life unencumbered by racial stereotypes. The story opens in a gay bar where Babe meets Chance, a Black, cheeky, so-called wigger, who wears his pants baggy and sports purple cornrows. Chance becomes a nice distraction from Babe’s faltering relationship with Matthew, whom he suspects of cheating and using crack. Things end badly when a violent barroom brawl erupts between Babe and Matthew. Suddenly single, Babe rents out the now-vacant room in his duplex to Alise, a troubled woman of faith with a housing subsidy, an errant husband, and a son. But Babe inexplicably also invites Chance to move in as his roommate. Driven by instinct since childhood, Babe senses an opportunity to help both Alise and Chance with more than a place to live, offering them a prospect for happiness. Soon, Chance attempts to romance Babe, despite jealous Matthew resurfacing to create more melodrama. In his debut novel, State of the Nation(2018), Ambrose demonstrated a skill for characterization in his portrayal of Black teenagers living in Atlanta as a serial killer stalked the city. Here, he again intensifies the narrative with both solid characterization and a plot that generates a very realistic portrait of what it’s like to be Black in America, including scenes of Babe and Chance encountering police harassment and homophobia. There are also impressively descriptive passages throughout, demonstrating the author’s gift for introspective language, as when he evokes the concept of the inner city as “a mythic imaginarium created by white flight—barbaric microcosms within the city proper where crime and vice ruled over morality and decency.” Ambrose incorporates many heady themes, like racism, bullying, mental health, and queer identity, into a story that is smoothly written and engrossing from start to finish. The author is a writer to watch.
A vibrant, gritty urban character study rich in cultural relevance, social gravitas, and interpersonal drama.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-64890-248-2
Page Count: 440
Publisher: Ninestar Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2022
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
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