A captivating tale about betrayal that presents impressively complex characters.
In this novel, an academic overachiever ends up in prison and, upon his release, struggles to restart his ravaged life.
The child of demanding Haitian immigrants—his father is a lawyer and his mother a nurse— Jean Valuer is ambitiously making progress on the “American Dream Highway.” After he earns a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Cornell University, he pursues a master’s from New York University, with aspirations to write novels and teach. But those dreams are destroyed when he’s arrested for drug possession. He is caught holding a bag filled with drugs, unbeknown to him, that was given to him by his best friend, Marcus Ramirez. Jean is eventually released from prison as part of a program to deter the spread of Covid-19, and, now 27 years old and free, he finds the world an inhospitable place for a felon. His girlfriend, Julie Matthews, abandons him; his parents shun him in disgust; and he discovers that it is nearly impossible to find a job with a criminal record. In this thoughtfully meditative novel by Mondesir, Jean is pulled between his desire to find meaning in his new circumstances and his burning need to exact revenge on Marcus for his treachery: “Betrayal by someone you love is like disembowelment; it eviscerates your sense of self-worth, and causes a sort of death.” Jean’s character is drawn with remarkable subtlety—a bookish, ruminative young man, he is simply too imaginative to foreclose the possibility of redemption, but also too intelligent to see it as plausible. Moreover, while the author is careful not to reduce the protagonist to mere symbolism—Jean is a fully realized human being—he is microcosmic of the dangers faced by African Americans in the United States, and the lonely dislocation caused by the pandemic. This is a powerful work that dramatically captures the fragility of life as well as the perseverance of the human spirit.
A captivating tale about betrayal that presents impressively complex characters.Pub Date: May 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798230176879
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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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