A philosophical jewel seeking revelation in interstices, absences, ruptures, and the passages between existence and memory.
Poetic and painterly, a meticulously observed contemplation of the world that was, the world that is, and the world that might have been and the boundaries that join and define them.
Following the death of her partner, known only as "M.," an unnamed narrator travels to Italy, where she briefly settles among the muted rhythms of a small town nestled in the hills surrounding Rome. Able to approach this loss only obliquely, her mourning takes the form of meditative walks, deep immersion in memories and dreams, and explorations of strangers' gravesites in cemeteries to which she has no connection, a habit instilled by her late father during their travels through Italy in her childhood. Her father was a German speaker whose bond to Italy was formed at the borderland of cultures, through his affinity for its language, art, and history. This he passed on to her as well, and she retraces these earlier journeys and embarks on new discoveries, her thoughts unfurling slowly across the landscape, rising and falling with the hills of Lazio. Light and shadow, color and shape, time and distance shift vertiginously according to her vantage point and the scope of her focus, which dilates from minutest detail to sweeping panorama, then narrows again; her sense of place within the landscape and the wider world alters, too, with each change in perspective, suggesting that how one sees is at least as important as what one sees. Ancient Etruscan necropolises and the untended graves of the long dead speak to the persistence of presence even through the absence of anyone left to remember, as symbols continue to signify where no one exists to decipher their meaning. As she wanders unhurried on the perpetual threshold of spring, the observed nesting upon the remembered upon the fictive realities of literature and film, the narrator bestows equal care and attention on rusted-out construction materials and blowing trash as on blooming mimosas and elegant herons in the marshland around Ferrara, where she contemplates the works of Giorgio Bassani and the great palimpsest that is Italy. Here at last she untangles the question central to her explorations of memory and place: whether she belongs to the side of the vii, the living, or of the morţi, the dead.
A philosophical jewel seeking revelation in interstices, absences, ruptures, and the passages between existence and memory.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-945492-38-9
Page Count: 287
Publisher: Transit Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
