A brisk, contemplative look at ideas of faith and heaven.
Chung’s spiritual novel explores life’s big questions.
Lucas is an American who lives in Paris. His wife has been dead for seven years, and he visits her grave every week. Although he describes himself as a “devout Christian,” he sometimes struggles with his faith. Lucas enjoys his work as a tour guide, ferrying visitors from Charles de Gaulle Airport to destinations like the Louvre. In the course of his work, he meets an assortment of people. Ivanov is an older Russian man who once served as a Soviet soldier; when he visits Paris, he experiences a “surge of complex emotions rising within.” Annie is a British woman in her 80s who is exploring the world on her own. She and Lucas discuss the existence of heaven, positing that “There’s only love and goodness there, and the people we cherish are there, waiting patiently for us.” Wei Yixin is an artist who has a work in the Louvre. She tells Lucas about a painting she made based on a dream about a church, and Lucas is intrigued—perhaps some kind of divine intervention is in play. Lucas takes Wei Yixin to his pastor so they can discuss the subject. After the pastor views the painting Wei Yixin made, he is largely unimpressed, explaining that “Dreams like this merely reflect one’s inner obsessions” and likely have nothing to do with the voice of God. The experience, though, conjures up some questions for Lucas, like, “Does God exist, and who is He?” and “What does He want us to do?”
Such questions propel Lucas as he talks to various characters. Later, similar ideas inspire his daughter, an influencer named Georgia, to post a message about faith. The narrative is a fast read and events move along quickly; people like Annie are not in Lucas’ life for very long. The story builds interest as the reader anticipates who will talk with Lucas next and what will be done with the knowledge that Lucas gleans. (A Muslim man explains his view of the afterlife: “Almighty Allah gathers every pure soul back into His embrace. That’s where our heaven lies.”) Though the novel explores heavy, age-old considerations about God and life’s purpose, the narrative tends to be light on debate. Certain events leave Lucas overcome with emotion, as when he “suddenly broke into uncontrollable sobs, tears streaming down his face” while reflecting on his wife, but there is not much in the way of direct conflict or suspense. Georgia receives some snarky responses to her post on faith, like, “If God really exists, then logic says He must be artificial intelligence—always among us, quietly watching,” but they do not do much to sway her. The story has a more meditative quality, but Chung has points to make: Georgia reflects, “even those devoted to materialism or healthy living rarely feel they’ve reached paradise while alive.” As people pursue their own ideas of happiness in life, the question remains: “Will we ever reach that heaven we’ve imagined?”
A brisk, contemplative look at ideas of faith and heaven.Pub Date: July 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781069560001
Page Count: 193
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2025
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
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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