Compelling characters navigate the moral and emotional complexities of forgiveness, stumbling into uncharted territory.
When a pregnant woman carrying twins is killed by a car while jogging, the aftermath is far different than anyone could have imagined.
Like Mbue’s PEN/Faulkner Award–winning debut, Behold the Dreamers (2016), her new novel centers on Cameroonian characters in the U.S., this time revolving around a man named Wolo Lifafa, an economist in New York. The first chapter is a letter to Wolo from Victoria Snow, the woman who’d struck and killed Wolo’s wife, Yoma, with her car three years earlier. In it she gives voice to her torment, expressing a desire to meet Wolo in person, though she doubts he can ever forgive her; she can’t forgive herself. Though his family and friends advise him to throw the letter away and never think of Victoria again, Wolo decides to meet her. He’s convinced there are details of the accident that were covered up, that the police investigation was botched or manipulated. Though Victoria swears none of this is true, she does reveal a detail that shocks Wolo. All along, he’s believed his wife’s killer was a flight attendant, but it turns out she’s a Delta pilot. The FAA would have revoked her license if they had found any negligence, but she was allowed to go back to work after an FAA investigation. The meeting ends acrimoniously, with neither party any less miserable than they were before—but this is only the beginning of the story. In parallel with events unfolding in the present, Mbue fills in the backstory of Wolo and Yoma’s relationship and the complexities of his family, most of whom are still in Cameroon. The issues of blame and forgiveness bring up for Wolo a dark piece of family history, also unpacked here. The story takes a surprising turn when Victoria offers Wolo an unusual and potentially very valuable gift. Can he—should he—accept any form of amends? Wouldn’t healing be a form of betrayal? Mbue’s novel pursues these questions with originality and narrative courage.
Compelling characters navigate the moral and emotional complexities of forgiveness, stumbling into uncharted territory.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217154777
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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