Lively fiction from a fine Maine novelist, one who deserves more attention.
A stolen triptych of paintings and a draconian boarding school are the gravitational poles of a story about love and lies, art and trauma, and the mysteries of fate.
Spark’s fifth novel opens on a Maine island in 2018 as an art appraiser named Gracie Thomas steps off the ferry, ready to be picked up for the last leg of her journey to the home of a collector who’s hired her to set the value of an important trio of paintings by the painter J. Morrison known as the Triplets. The ferry terminal clears out, her ride does not materialize, there’s no cell service, and suddenly the wintry weather is life-threatening. Chapter 2 leaves Gracie by the side of the road and moves to a suburban high school in 1978 Connecticut where Reggie Rupo, who’s been bouncing through the foster care system for most of his life, is pulled out of Spanish class and shipped off to a carceral boarding school called Adalie Lake (whose searing details are based on the author’s interviews with alumni of a real facility closed only in 2011). Chapter 3 turns the clock back to the 1930s with a series of letters between J. Morrison and his wife, Victoria, in which we learn a secret about the Triplets that has been buried ever since. Meanwhile, returning to 2018, Gracie will survive her ordeal only to discover the paintings have gone missing, likely stolen. But what does 1970s Reggie have to do with it? The plot threads come together in a style reminiscent of the linked story collections of Joan Silber—while there is a substantial throughline connecting the key players, there are also characters and settings important in one or two stories, then not seen again. The overall effect is vibrant and suspenseful, if lapsing occasionally into cliche or hasty resolutions of carefully developed situations. After waiting a long time to see whether and how that secret about the paintings will come to light, we expect more outcome than we get. On the other hand, it’s a great little ending.
Lively fiction from a fine Maine novelist, one who deserves more attention.Pub Date: March 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781954245983
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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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