An insightful (if sometimes meandering) look at how the ripples of the past can unwittingly shape our future.
A struggling high school track coach is forced to confront his past when an old friend and rival reappears in his life in Penswick’s novel.
When readers first meet Turner, he’s living with his longtime girlfriend, Kim, and sleepwalking through his job as a teacher and track coach at Galt Tech High School outside Toronto. Originally hired to teach math, he’s now been “sentenced to English” by his vindictive principal and is focused on helping a talented track star, Donovan, break the record (set by a young Turner himself) at the upcoming Vintage Mile race. Turner’s past catches up to him when his former high school best friend, Lance, returns to Galt. Now a successful investment banker (in between jobs in the midst of the financial crisis), Lance dangles an “investment opportunity” in front of Kim, a real estate agent—an opportunity that may prove riskier than it first seems. Turner still resents Lance for winning the track scholarship that Turner had so desperately wanted back in high school before he blew out his knee during a race. As Lance begins joining Turner at track practice, the old rivalry instincts kick in as the two men compete for something more personal. But a tragic accident forces Turner to finally reconcile his past regrets, even as his relationship with Kim begins breaking down amidst their inability to conceive and he learns that Donovan has been silently struggling with an increasingly volatile home life. Turner decides that the only way for him to truly let go of his past demons is to compete one more time in the Vintage Mile.
Penswick excels at conveying Turner’s inner monologues and musings (of which there are many) with an endearing warmth that readers will likely sympathize with, even as they disagree with some of his choices. Turner’s long held grudge—believing that Lance “stole” his scholarship from him (although Turner’s injury cost him the prize)—can prove particularly frustrating, but it accurately represents a common failing of many former athletes (and people in general) who blame others for their own lost opportunities. The novel’s long and winding sentences demand readers’ utmost attention, but just when the thread of “he said,” “she said” extends until it’s difficult to remember who’s speaking in the first place, the author hits readers with startlingly astute observations of human nature: “All that time I’d been in Manhattan because it’s the centre of everything. But lately I’ve started thinking it might be like the eye of the storm, where nothing happens. Nothing real. Maybe real life happens out on the periphery, where there’s all the wind and mess.” Penswick explores not only the competitive world of high school sports, but also larger themes of physical abuse, infertility, infidelity, and trauma. While the love triangle aspect of the plot leaves something to be desired (mainly due to a conclusion that is likely to strike readers as a bit too tidy), it’s Turner’s struggle to move on from his past—and the insidious hold it still has on his present—that ultimately makes this such an engaging read. Fans of both deep character studies and sports fiction will find much to enjoy.
An insightful (if sometimes meandering) look at how the ripples of the past can unwittingly shape our future.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 979-8887938455
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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