A disturbing coming-of-age wartime drama.
Fischer’s historical novel follows the lives of several Yugoslavians as they struggle to survive World War II.
In November of 1938, in the small Yugoslavian village of Werbass, a family conversation has turned to the worrying news: Germany has taken the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Months earlier, Hitler marched into Austria under the same premise of unifying all German-speaking lands under one flag. Seven-year-old Jana Mueller, the only child of her parents, Klaus and Gisela, has been listening to the discussion among her father and his three younger brothers. The Mueller family is of German ancestry, but Klaus, unlike his siblings, sees no need for Germany to collect another country just because of generational heritage (“he had some misgivings about the dangerous path the leaders in Germany were taking”). Months later, in the city of Pančevo, 12-year-old Johann Schuler, the oldest son of Hans and Elisabeth, is playing soccer with his best friend, Goran. The boys are peripherally aware of Europe’s political disturbances, but their only interest is in being able to play on their soccer teams. Pančevo’s diverse population of Germans, Serbs, Hungarians, Jews, and Muslims, the result of centuries of wars and conquests, is a cauldron of internal fissures ripe for exploitation. Nazi adherents are evident in the city; their banners are hanging in the streets, and drawings of swastikas have appeared. As the war rages on—the Soviets attacking from one side and the Germans from another—both Klaus and Hans are drafted, and Johann, Jana, and her mother, Gisela, are left to seek safety. Fischer effectively uses the experiences of the Mueller and Schuler families to illustrate the plight of ordinary citizens of Germanic heritage caught up in the world conflagration. Unfortunately, while the author’s prose is engaging, it lacks the complexity demanded by the subject matter. Still, this is an engaging story of civilian survival rather than a replay of big-name battles; instead of lingering on the depth of Nazi atrocities, the author focuses instead upon the personal traumas of his main characters.
A disturbing coming-of-age wartime drama.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2026
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
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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