Once more unto the British class system.
A drama of family and politics, power and comeuppance shines an unflattering light on the upper echelons of British society.
Although a freestanding novel, Day’s latest is a sequel to The Party (2017), picking up on the tangle of connections linking a set of upper- and middle-class friends, relatives and colleagues, several of them unhappy, unappealing, or both. The core relationship is between smooth, successful, aristocratic Ben Fitzmaurice—now the government’s energy secretary—and middle-class loner Martin Gilmour, his old school pal, who has long and silently nursed an attraction to his popular buddy. Their relationship was severed at Ben’s 40th birthday party, seven years ago, and has only resumed now, at the funeral of Ben’s addict sister, Fliss, because Martin has been invited by Ben’s wife, Serena. In a cast that tends toward the stereotypical, other characters include eco-warrior Cosima, one of Ben’s four children, and his repulsive, lecherous financier, Andrew Jarvis. The mystery surrounding Fliss’ drowning—was it suicide? an accident?—is the central enigma, but Day is more interested in the psychologies and inner dialogues of her characters. Martin, having loyally protected Ben after a fatal car crash during their student days, has finally had his fill of Fitzmaurice assumptions and manipulations and is “motivated not by a need to belong, but by a need to bring them down. The whole bloody lot of them.” And once in receipt of the necessary tools, he’s in a position to threaten Ben’s campaign to be party leader and potentially prime minister. There’s a familiarity to this general scenario (think of the movie Saltburn or Alan Hollinghurst’s novels). Some of it is intentional—the prime minister is described in terms reminiscent of Boris Johnson—and some of it not. The chilling self-absorption of the upper classes and their political and personal modes have been charted often. Day’s approach is brightly readable but not exactly original.
Once more unto the British class system.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217061983
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
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
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