A promising debut that clearly depicts both the rewards and the deep losses of American immigration.
An Indian American family is rocked by a medical crisis in this sensitive debut.
The Bharwani family has been drifting apart for years, with daughter Fareen pursuing a career at Goldman Sachs in New York and son Adnan engaged in shadowy business dealings in Nigeria. But when their mother, Sakeena, collapses at home in Miami, the pushes and pulls between family life and the outside world become harder and harder to balance. While Fareen is consumed by the possibility of a promotion and Adnan hides the reality of his situation from his family, their sister Kawal must take on the burden of her mother’s care while also managing her own pregnancy. Adding to these complications is the fact that Sakeena, a religious Muslim, believes in naseeb, or destiny, and thus refuses essential treatment for her life-threatening condition against her doctor’s instructions. Her children, as well as her devoted husband, Ramzan, are torn between trying to force her to comply with her doctors, giving her a chance to receive the liver transplant that could save her life, and letting her maintain control over her own body. Lakhani skillfully inhabits each family member and delves into the past to explore how their relationships formed. He is especially good at showing how many family members have been gripped by the immigrant’s drive to succeed, even if that drive leads to unhappiness. Sakeena, meanwhile, represents a different way of thinking, one ruled less by logic and expediency. Though the book has flaws—bizarrely, given the severe nature of Sakeena’s medical crisis, Lakhani mentions health insurance and medical costs only in passing—this is a thoughtful and carefully constructed novel.
A promising debut that clearly depicts both the rewards and the deep losses of American immigration.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781640097568
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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