An intricate epic depicting an impressively realized, cataclysmic world.
A woman battles addiction and grief in McGarry’s World War I–era historical novel.
In the Mississippi delta in 1916, Lillian Molyneaux awakens in her “barge-like bed” and stumbles to the library in her home to look again at an item in the newspaper lining the birdcage of Opelika, a pet parrot. The article is an account of a badly decomposed body pulled from the river; the remains, Lillian, pieces together, are those of Martha Cutler, the often-beaten wife of Levi Cutler, the business partner of her banker husband, Scanlan. Lillian has been in an alcohol-fueled haze since two of her five children died in the 1913 yellow fever epidemic; Scanlan resorted to sending her to a sanatorium for a time. Now, believing she has spotted the partner’s wife still living, Lillian starts to shake off her stupor. She learns of Scanlan’s venture to buy up land and grow soybeans as a foodstuff (“The King Bean”) that he expects will soon be in demand; he has early word that the United States is about to enter World War I. She questions Scanlan about these activities and reconnects with her living children. Scanlan considers sending Lillian back to the sanatorium (this time allowing its eugenics-focused Dr. Douglas Friendly to perform electroshock-type treatments to make her more amendable). Opelika, who became addicted to poppies and rum following family deaths of her own, is caught up in this intrigue—Friendly is pursuing a project to “wire” parrots’ brains to become wartime messengers. By the novel’s end, a one-two punch of fire and flooding disasters hits the community, after which Lillian and other characters find their lives transformed.
McGarry has ably crafted an ambitious narrative that crosscuts between flashbacks and Lillian’s present to relay the arcs of an array of characters living in the deeply troubled South just as America enters its first world war; in this regard, this novel is reminiscent of such sweeping historical works of fiction as Ragtime. While the avian musings of Opelika (and, later, the thoughts of Big Sue, a horse that Lillian flees on) initially seem like jarring elements for this genre, these interludes ultimately support the novel’s building theme that even animals are aware of and responsive to the evil actions taking place in this world. The book ultimately takes on an apocalyptic cast—the darkness of the narrative is oppressive at times, including a subplot detailing a stepfather’s rape of his stepdaughter that results in three deaths. The sanatorium’s experiments also seem a bit over the top, although the story includes an effectively chilling coda indicating that its evil doctor is returning to his home country and will play a part in the looming world war to come. Thankfully, the author allows some hope to bloom as Lillian becomes more fully engaged with her previously estranged sister and children, knowing “whatever was coming, they’d get through it.”
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2021
ISBN: 9781735891507
Page Count: 547
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
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