An elegiac and meticulously crafted ode to a still somewhat mysterious figure.
An ethereal novel imagines the interior life of Jackie Kennedy from the time she met Jack, her husband-to-be, to her death.
After beginning with the horrifying scene of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the novel backtracks to 1951, when Jack is a congressman from Massachusetts and Jackie is about to spend a summer in Europe with her sister before taking a job at Vogue. It follows them year by year, homing in on significant scenes from each, moving through their complicated courtship, early marriage, the birth of two children and the loss of two others, the presidency, the assassination and its aftermath, Jackie’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis, her work as an editor in New York, and her cancer diagnosis. The novel is mostly narrated in the present tense by Jackie, with occasional interludes reflecting Jack’s thoughts about her and their relationship, which is perpetually roiled by his affairs. Tripp, who appends an extensive bibliography, has clearly done her research and integrates it seamlessly into the novel, which comes across as sympathetic to Jackie but not cloyingly so. The presidential years are the least compelling with Jackie as the protagonist; it’s hard for thoughts about refurnishing the White House to compete with the drama of the space race and the Cuban missile crisis. For better or worse, she comes into her own after the death of the president, as she makes an escape from the role of icon to her messy marriage to Onassis and a satisfying life as an editor. If the novel sometimes drifts into cliche—Jackie dreamily sees Jack as “six feet of casual stardust,” for instance—it’s redeemed by the close, intelligent, and not always generous attention that Jackie, often forced into the role of passive observer, pays to those around her.
An elegiac and meticulously crafted ode to a still somewhat mysterious figure.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780812997217
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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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