Another overly busy but nonetheless memorable snapshot of LGBTQ+ high school life in a bygone era.
The continuing saga of a resilient gay high schooler’s adolescent adventures.
Prolific author Eldot picks up where You’re in High School Now (2015) left off, with young North Carolina high school sophomore Julian Forrest facing new feelings and challenges in late 1962. The author again succeeds in establishing the era in which his protagonist’s youth plays out amid themes of inclusivity, friendship, burgeoning sexuality, and the precarious state of race relations during the school desegregation movement of the mid-20th century. Eldot imparts many life lessons over the course of the narrative; the first is that focused dedication to one’s schoolwork will not only garner one good grades, but also beneficial recognition from instructors when one least expects it. Julian’s consistently pleasant demeanor, personal flair, and conscientious, hard work make his teachers think of him as a model student. His rare, enviable qualities draw the attention of several teachers who believe he would make an ideal helper for an incoming Black student named Kassa “Kasey” Wood. The son of a prominent Boston scientist, Kasey is a polite, friendly, and impressively talented young pianist who comes to appreciate the time that Julian devotes to helping him adjust to a new town, a new school, and new classmates; in a compelling sequence, Julian even insists on racial equality at a segregated “whites-only” diner. The relationship between these two characters would be sufficient to carry the entire novel, but Eldot has grander visions in mind, carried out by a parade of peripheral teenage characters who take their turns marching through the novel.
Their storylines—some fleeting, some with greater staying power—definitely add some panache to the tale and enliven what becomes a rather overlong tome, as it extends to nearly 600 pages in length. Readers will likely want Julian, a budding artist, and pianist extraordinaire Kasey to remain at center stage, and they often do. However, they’re upstaged much too often by other scenes concerned with randy camping adventures, fart jokes, or extended family melodrama. The omniscient third-person narration is often dryly humorous, but the book also explores Julian and Kasey’s friendship through the eyes of folks who know very little about them. This narrative twist affords readers a look at what it’s like to be observed and blindly judged by casual strangers. As with the other books in this series, the author doesn’t ever shy away from the nuances of sexual attraction, which plays a particularly substantial role in Julian’s young life. The teens’ flirtations and overt physical carnality are portrayed as unashamed and innocently exploratory; they show the characters to be primarily concerned with mutual, guiltless pleasure but also fully aware of the necessity of social discretion in that time and place. Although the narrative does feel extravagantly expository at times, its overall sense of social consciousness is remarkable. A concluding, expansive glossary, filled with historical references to the 1960s, will be helpful for newcomers to the setting.
Another overly busy but nonetheless memorable snapshot of LGBTQ+ high school life in a bygone era.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7328805-5-9
Page Count: 708
Publisher: Diphra Enterprises
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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