An ambitious if uneven debut exploring the possibilities of love, self-realization, and art under and beyond the White gaze.
Saddled with the name of his “father's favorite writer” by his colonial-throwback Jamaican parents, aspiring author Kipling Starling is desperate to be published and will do seemingly anything to realize his dream.
Encouraged in writing by his schoolteachers and believing himself “useless at anything but,” Kip built his personality from the expectations and literary opinions of others and the blueprint for his future from those he saw as his predecessors, assimilating Dostoevsky’s style by repeatedly rereading Crime and Punishment and leaving his family in London for New York because fellow “skinny gay black” writer James Baldwin had found success in America. More than recognition of his work or talent, Kip seems to crave the legitimization that acceptance from the predominantly White world of publishing would signify, as he “flounder[s] in the wake of a peculiar invention called Whiteness.” Having been kicked out of his MFA program and despairing over a spate of rejections for his historical novel about E.M. Forster’s relationship with Egyptian tram conductor Mohammed El Adl, Kip receives an inexplicable invitation to meet with a “publishing legend” who was among his rejectors. In the meeting, she implies that a rewrite from Mohammed's perspective might entice her, but there's a catch: In four weeks' time, “a commercial media conglomerate” will acquire the publisher, and the editor expresses nebulous doubts that she will be allowed to continue acquiring literary fiction after the merger is complete. Thus Kip is launched on a frenzied three-week rewrite quest, and he barricades himself in the basement of the Brooklyn brownstone he shares with his well-intentioned but oblivious White psychotherapist husband, Ben. As boundaries between Mohammed and Kip in his isolation begin to dissolve and a mysterious entity appears, Kip is propelled into a still larger quest to find his “true voice” in a wilderness beyond the confines of Whiteness itself. Though the result is an overplotted and lopsided narrative with a sometimes-tedious start crawling toward a rushed ending, the book still shines at times in the elegance of its prose and its depictions of a stark arctic landscape and in Kip’s musings through Mohammed’s story on the intersections of colonialism, White supremacy, and queer love, particularly the liberatory potentialities of queer love between Black men.
An ambitious if uneven debut exploring the possibilities of love, self-realization, and art under and beyond the White gaze.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-315955-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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