This novel is a triumph.
Two royal cousins—Ludwig II of Bavaria and the Empress Elisabeth of Austria—chafe against the constraints of power even as the world around them seeks to strip that power away.
Elisabeth (or Sisi, as she is known) is born in 1837 with a double dose of royal blood, but she's raised outside the intrigues and expectations of the Bavarian court. Her father, Duke Max—a minor member of the Wittelsbach dynasty—plays the zither and loves nothing more than the circus, while her mother, Princess Ludovika of Bavaria, Max’s first cousin, picks fleas from her lapdog at the tea table. Raised in Possenhofen, a summer palace 6 miles from the seat of power in Munich, Sisi has an idyllic childhood that prepares her for a life of willful privilege, a prophecy that seems fulfilled when she catches the eye of her cousin Emperor Franz Joseph, to whom she is promised when she is only 15. It soon becomes clear to Sisi, however, that life in the rigidly formal court of the Hapsburgs represents the exact opposite of the freedom she enjoyed as a child. She chafes wildly against the expectations of her new husband and his formidable mother, the Archduchess Sophie, that she be an ornament of the crown whose only real duty is to behave well and produce an heir. Meanwhile, in Nymphenburg castle in Munich, Sisi’s cousin Ludwig, heir to the Bavarian throne, eschews the more practical side of his royal education in favor of the heady distractions—art, theater, ballet, human beauty—he sees as his birthright. Obsessed with the exquisite, Ludwig becomes a fervent patron of the arts, a builder of pleasure palaces, a custodian of refined theatrical passion, and an utter failure at managing the pressing needs of a kingdom threatened by German unification under Bismarck. As the cousins’ lives intertwine, Jemc masterfully weaves the political intrigues of the time (replete with anarchist uprisings, proto-democracies, and the death throes of the Hapsburg dynasty that would eventually lead to cataclysmic war) without losing track of the essential humanity of Ludwig and Sisi in their fey quest to remake the world into the version of beauty they believe is its ideal. Sensual, intricate, and filled with the verve of its own opulent language, Jemc’s retelling of these apocryphal lives delivers all the urgency of their time into our own without losing any of the fidelity it owes to their real legacies.
This novel is a triumph.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-374-27792-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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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