A sharp and well-observed portrait of lives at the crossroads.
Asprakis’ novel follows four intertwined 20-somethings in 2004 Cyprus.
After seven years abroad in London, Aristos returns to Cyprus with his new girlfriend, Wendy. Soon they are settling in, living in an apartment owned by Aristos’ father and connecting with the childhood friend group that Aristos left behind. His best friends, Petros and Melina, are recently engaged, and his former girlfriend, Agathi, does not seem to be entirely over him. The story begins with a tight focus on Aristos but soon expands as the narrative alternates between the perspectives of the major characters (aside from Agathi). Giving each character their own attention and weight, Asprakis fills in their complicated backstories and shows how their pasts have shaped their present. Melina must decide whether or not she really loves Petros and if their engagement is something she will see through all the way to marriage. Wendy, as the outsider, serves as a reader surrogate as she experiences Cyprus, detailing her experiences on the island with the fresh eyes of a newcomer. Like the other characters, she is also confronting issues from her past—in her case, a less-then-ideal stint in art school. As she reflects at an evening church service, “People are beaming and linking arms, not one of them lonely. Not one of them free. So many times in her young life, Wendy has feared that art would not work out—and then what would she do?” Interspersed throughout the story are historical details about Greece (and Cyprus in particular), including references to the 1974 Greek takeover of Cyprus and the Turkish invasion. Every so often, the narrative is interrupted by Accident Investigation reports for airplane crashes, leading to the deadliest airplane crash in Cyprus history. Readers unfamiliar with this particular incident may find the reports jarring, disconnected as they are from anything else in the story. Still, the dark cloud they generate has its intended effect, even if readers do not know what’s coming.
A sharp and well-observed portrait of lives at the crossroads.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781036918910
Page Count: 329
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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