A thoughtfully imagined, if not always subtle, critique of our fractured moment.
A doctor strives to preserve his family in the face of civic collapse.
National Book Award winner Packer—for The Unwinding (2013)—wrote a pair of novels in the 1990s before establishing himself as a prolific reporter on the American scene. For his first work of fiction in the 21st century, he funnels his collected observations of a broken America into a dystopian allegory. Hugo Rustin, the novel’s protagonist, is a doctor and self-proclaimed champion of “humanism” who’s committed to finding common ground among factions. But since an unspecified “Emergency” has disrupted the country, everyone is too divided for such sentiment. The nation is split between largely urban and educated Burghers, rural and rough-hewn Yeomen, and roving Strangers caught in the middle. And the Burghers are internally split among the spitefully unemployed (Excess Burghers), oversharing woke mobs, and those who think high-tech bionics offer a way out (Better Humans). Plotwise, the novel follows Hugo and his 14-year-old daughter, Selva, as they head to Yeoman country to conduct a wellness check on a Stranger his wife had befriended, but it’s a journey into ideological bantering as much as a trip into a forest. As the editor of two collections of George Orwell’s writing, Packer is alert to the clarifying power of a clear allegory as well as potent storytelling. But while the novel is a crystal-clear commentary on a broken America in the Trump era, Packer can’t quite shake off years of operating in pundit mode, which makes for some clunky, declamatory passages: “Some mechanism beyond the timepiece itself seemed to have broken, as if the spirit in the civic machine that attuned everyone to its rhythms and kept the regular hours of their lives no longer moved.” Propulsive closing chapters return him to thriller mode, but he tests readers’ patience on the way there.
A thoughtfully imagined, if not always subtle, critique of our fractured moment.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780374614720
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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