An engrossing debut that sees both the good and bad sides of Costa Rica.
Three stories offer an intriguing look into the lives of Costa Rican characters—Ticos—as they deal with their roles in their families and society.
In “The Lives of Saints,” the opening story in this debut collection, an immigrant woman living in the United States reflects on her philandering husband’s life after he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. His poor health causes her to reconsider her unwavering loyalty to him, as well as her fervent belief in her Catholic faith. “Studying the lives of saints was a conspiracy to hold us back from a full life,” she muses, “forcing us to always postpone joy for a tomorrow that might or might not come.” Indeed, her religion is what convinced her to stay with her husband, endlessly forgiving his transgressions. Similarly, in the second story, “Las Tres Marías,” three Boston-born teen sisters who return to Costa Rica with their parents are bound by locals’ perceptions of them as loose, hypersexualized gringas, simply by virtue of their beauty and origins. Pilar, the shyest sister, is so caught up in the assumptions of those around her that she begins to lose faith in herself, eventually finding herself coerced into a toxic sexual relationship with an older man. The third story, “La Familia,” involves Juan Manuel, a naturalized U.S. American Tico, called back to his native country when his brother is arrested for terrorism. He, too, is constrained by duties to his family, even when it puts him in danger. Rojas highlights these restrictions, along with the cultural misunderstandings that occur as a result of them. The intensity of Juan’s experience is downplayed by those looking in from the outside, as a customs agent reveals when Juan returns to the U.S. after the ordeal. “Wish we could all be so lucky: two years in paradise,” the agent says. Rojas weaves expertly between distinct stories and families, creating a network of Costa Rican experience that is equally loving and critical. She shows her readers that no homeland is perfect—not even “paradise.”
An engrossing debut that sees both the good and bad sides of Costa Rica.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781518508073
Page Count: -
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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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