Faithful to the spirit of Dickens, this engaging tale gives two neglected characters their due.
A fictional memoir reimagines Dickens’ holiday classic A Christmas Carol.
Few stories are better known than that of Ebenezer Scrooge, the misanthrope who, thanks in large part to the ghost of his partner, Jacob Marley, is redeemed. Readers all know Bob Cratchit (and Tiny Tim) and even Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, who will not give up trying to cajole his uncle back into the human race. But in this telling, in the form of Fred’s memoir, Marley does not die. Instead, after he gets himself in deep trouble, he and Ebenezer successfully stage Marley’s death, and he decamps to America. It is no spoiler to say that Fred’s version also ends well, with the transformed Scrooge whom readers have all come to adore. Scrooge then devotes his life to promoting good causes and preaching the gospel of loving one’s fellow man. And Fred’s memoir reveals what really happened that fateful, magical night that changed Scrooge forever. In terms of period details and customs, Dickens would surely approve of Rapier’s retelling. A difference is that readers get a much fuller picture of Fred, a real mensch, and Marley, a livelier and more outgoing character than his friend Ebenezer (which leads to his downfall). An intriguing point about young Fred is that early on in his marriage to the lovely Emily, he almost stumbles into the Scrooge trap: Emily wants a baby, and Fred desires just a little more money, just a little more security first. A close call. But with the exception of one tight year, the couple’s Christmas party with its silly games is a treasured tradition for all their friends. Thus does the eternal struggle between grasping and giving play out. And readers learn in this enjoyable story that Scrooge was not Fred’s uncle’s real surname but one of those inspired Dickensian eponyms. An afterword by Fred’s son, Ebenezer, ties all the loose ends together in a fashion that Boz would applaud.
Faithful to the spirit of Dickens, this engaging tale gives two neglected characters their due.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-937937-24-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Twin Oaks Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
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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