All the author’s formal risks result in well-earned rewards.
The slow-burn story of Tarek, a Levantine Christian doctor whose life seems prescribed for him in every matter, even love.
As the book opens during Tarek’s boyhood in 1960s Cairo, an omniscient speaker says: “You were of an age to have no life plans beyond what others devised for you. Was it really just a matter of age, though?” The use of “you” throughout the first section creates a distinct separation between Tarek and the speaker, but there’s still a sense of intimacy. The speaker seems to know and deeply feel everything they write about Tarek’s life. Questions of who this speaker is, and whether it could be Tarek himself, hover over a good portion of the novel. Point of view plays an essential role in how the story unfolds over the course of three sections, titled “You,” “Me,” and “Us.” Tarek follows the path expected of him. He becomes a successful doctor with a practice in Dokki and a clinic in Mokattam, and he gets married. “In the Armenian tradition, it fell to your wife’s mother to welcome you into your new home. She offered you a spoonful of honey with nuts, to wish you a sweet life. The spell lasted barely a year.” Tarek’s daily routine is shaken when he meets Ali, who arrives at the clinic seeking help for his mother. The initial medical appointment turns into many visits Tarek pays to Ali and his mother, which now include dinner and conversation. Ali’s mother, whose health has deteriorated, asks Tarek to let Ali work at the clinic. He agrees, and the bond between Ali and Tarek becomes even stronger. Then everything changes for Tarek in a moment: “You were like a child who seizes a momentary lapse in their parent’s attention to open a box of matches. The child doesn’t know when exactly it will happen, or what kind of fire they will spark. But they understand the possibility, however remote.” As they so often do, the speaker adeptly locates a metaphor for the situation and the feelings that result. Chacour’s exceptional restraint in divulging information lets the tension build, carrying the book into the revelation of who is writing Tarek’s story.
All the author’s formal risks result in well-earned rewards.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781552454855
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Coach House Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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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