Strout’s many fans will love this sweet, rambling tale. More critical readers may feel it’s time for her to move on.
A group of familiar characters cluster around an almost-romance between writer Lucy Barton and lawyer Bob Burgess.
Strout’s latest novel is essentially a collection of stories, many of them shared by Lucy and Olive Kitteridge, who somewhat arbitrarily set this plotline in motion by telling Bob, “I have a story to tell that writer....I wish you would have her come visit me.” Lucy relocated to Crosby, Maine, with her ex-husband, William, during the pandemic, conveniently bringing together the people and backstories from most of Strout’s previous fiction. Among those returning with new chapters in their histories are Bob’s brother, Jim; sister, Susan; and ex-wife, Pam; along with his current wife, Margaret, a local minister who may be ousted by a parishioner whose defining quality is that he sleeps during services. The parishioner’s motive is never specified, which suits the overall tone of a novel anchored in the central premise of Strout’s work: “We all are such mysteries.” When Olive asks Lucy with irritation what the point of one of her stories is (readers may be wondering the same), Lucy answers, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” A murder case in which Bob is defending a man accused of killing his mother offers the only firm closure here; more typical is another twist in the long-running issue of who was responsible for the death of Jim and Bob’s father, which culminates with the declaration, “No one will ever know.” Even Bob’s growing attraction to Lucy, though it reaches a crisis, subsides without definitive resolution. Strout’s tenderness for her characters and her belief that love is the only force in human lives as powerful as our essential loneliness are as moving as ever. But this all seems like very well-plowed terrain.
Strout’s many fans will love this sweet, rambling tale. More critical readers may feel it’s time for her to move on.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593446096
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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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