An intriguing but uneven attempt at political satire.
A debut satire offers a fictional autobiography of President Joe Biden.
Did you know that Biden grew up laboring in the coal mines of Detroit, where the dust dyed his skin so dark that he was mistaken for an African American? Or that he and his friends built a car out of pumpkins? Or that he tricked his elementary school teacher into having sex with him by pretending to be her husband? Or that he met the real Huckleberry Finn? These are just some of the unexpected exploits from the young life of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., recorded here by the pseudonymous Galt. Biden’s reminiscences are intercut with interviews with those who knew him way back when as well as some of his friends and rivals from his time in politics. (There’s even a song written about Biden by Vladimir “the Big Inhaler” Putin, sung to the tune of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”) Galt certainly has an impressive imagination—for a while, Biden seemingly inhabits the life of Pittsburgh Steelers great “Mean” Joe Greene. Unfortunately, the author’s attempt to parody Biden’s cadence and verbal mistakes makes the prose very difficult to follow: “I am Pro-Choice, I am Pro-Choice in all things, even like in your getting up in the morning. Why? Hunter doesn’t get up some time until the next day. But when he does, he’s choiced the thing himself. So that’s that.” But the book’s primary sin is simply that it frequently isn’t funny. Biden is a man with many characteristics that could be mined for humor, but the author’s take on him is often incoherent and rarely recognizable. Galt has Biden deliver a lot of slurs that, in the real world, he is not known for using. There are racist jokes, transphobic jokes, Ukraine jokes, and a lot of fart jokes, but none of them land. Even readers who hate the president and want to laugh at him will likely come away from this fictional work a bit bored and confused.
An intriguing but uneven attempt at political satire.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 9781958690970
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2023
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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