An irreverent, funny, heartwarming, and heartbreaking novel.
Life, death, religion, and the best and worst of humanity clash in Forbes’ darkly comic novel.
In November 1999, immediately after feeding her pigs, self-professed “grouch” Fay Kirkwood is graciously “spared one last unnecessary winter” and a disastrous new millennium when she drops dead, due to a sudden stroke. Unfortunately for Fay, her soul doesn’t slip away quietly and peacefully into a serene afterlife; instead, her consciousness lingers, “aware but useless for all eternity,” watching life go on through the eyes of others. This means that Fay has a front-row seat when her niece Dryden finds her body and makes a decision that upends the lives of friends, family members, and strangers alike. Ever the realist, and with a twisted sense of wit, Fay used to joke that when she died, she wanted to be fed to wildlife rather than be filled with toxins and take up any more space in the world. Dryden grants her wish, opting to feed Fay’s body to coyotes, rather than notify the police. When word gets out of this alternative burial, Fay’s small New England town erupts in curiosity and rumors of conspiracy: Did Dryden get rid of Fay so that she could get her inheritance? Did Dryden dispose of her aunt in exchange for money and land? Is there something more sinister to these private and peculiar women than the townspeople originally thought? Forbes has crafted an insightful, witty, and grimly humorous tale of life, death, and the great beyond. The narrative is well plotted and evenly paced, and the characters, from rigidly religious folk to hopeless romantics and jilted lovers, are thoughtfully complex, no matter how often or how rarely they grace the pages. Irreverent Fay is an oddly lovable protagonist, thanks to her delightful bravado and ceaseless cynicism; through her skeptical eyes, readers see a vision of humanity in all its brutality and beauty.
An irreverent, funny, heartwarming, and heartbreaking novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781578692163
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
