A family tale for modern times—detailed, thorough, and thoughtful—that rings true throughout.
This novel about pain and a search for redemption centers on a power broker in Washington, D.C.
It’s 2016, and Mark White, a 40-something widower, is in even worse shape than he realizes, which would surprise many people. He is the founder and CEO of White & Partners, a tremendously successful public relations firm in Washington that has clients all over the world, including in many emerging nations, within high-tech startups, and in domestic government entities. For those who need their companies’ reputations burnished or, just as important, salvaged, White & Partners is their best bet, their go-to. But after Mark’s wife, Monica, a very successful artist, was killed in a hit-and-run accident, leaving him with their young son, Colin, the magnate fell into a deep depression. Now he is gulping pills and drinking too much while trying to be a corporate superman. Soon, exhausted and rattled, he breaks down and White & Partners suffers, big time. And on top of this, he knows that he is neglecting Colin, who, unsurprisingly, has trouble coping himself. Will Mark work out a salvation for himself and his boy? Bovim writes very well. Readers see the story through Mark’s eyes, so the narration is a vivid part of it. Mark is a keen student of his surroundings and his own troubled soul, introspective almost to a fault. Here is part of his bitter reverie on San Francisco: “I thought about…the wannabe Beat poets…blocked novelists, failed and miserable, destitute jazz pianists and confused painters who still believed that they were one masterful triptych away from a retrospective at the Pompidou.” He describes his own numb travels (and travails) as continually “traversing the continent on United’s weary fleet.” What drives the engrossing book’s second half, the hunt for redemption portion, is Mark’s affection for his son, a genuine love even if it is saturated with guilt. Readers will be fervently hoping for the hero to triumph, silently cheering him on. Colin is preternaturally wise as father and son try to work together to save themselves.
A family tale for modern times—detailed, thorough, and thoughtful—that rings true throughout.Pub Date: June 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951937-38-6
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Epigraph
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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
PERSPECTIVES
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