A taut and often compelling novel of the Spanish American War.
Darling offers a family and political drama set in turn-of-the-20th-century Puerto Rico.
This historical novel subjects teenager Maria Josefina, nicknamed Fina, to constant political and personal turmoil over the five years the story covers, from 1895 to 1900. Puerto Rico is a colony of Spain, and the sons of participants in a failed 1868 revolt are agitating for a chance to finish what their fathers started. While they plan, Spanish loyalists are carrying out vigilante attacks against the revolutionaries’ families. When American soldiers arrive in 1898, they defeat the Spanish army but fail to bring peace to the beautiful but turbulent island. Fina experiences a personal tragedy due to the actions of marauding bands, and her father loses his coffee farm due to his drinking and gambling problems. Much older neighbor Dino Cesari negotiates a deal to marry Fina’s eldest sister, Martina, and the two remaining daughters move into her well-guarded new home. There, Fina falls in love with revolutionary Jorge Cesari; her newfound stability crumbles after his revolutionary group unsuccessfully attacks a nearby Spanish garrison and her lover is forced to flee the island. After a tragedy, Fina’s sister faces the wrath of her in-laws. The siblings’ circumstances don’t improve with the arrival of the Americans and worsen further after a hurricane. Over the course of this novel, Darling effectively weaves together tales of political and personal turmoil. She also uses Fina’s rather innocent perspective to allow readers to experience raw emotions: fear, bewilderment, and loss but also love and hope. (Most of the text is narrated by Fina, but occasional chapters are told from an omniscient third-person perspective, which can be jarring.) Darling effectively demonstrates the complexity of the history underpinning the story as Taino, Spanish, and Corsican characters fight over the future of the island. Rich descriptions of the environment and culture soften the effect of some of the more violent moments.
A taut and often compelling novel of the Spanish American War.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9798849889726
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 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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