A gorgeous novel that rejoices in the legacy of the woman who tells tales.
Shaherazade forges a path for herself against the turbulent, violent backdrop of the Third Crusade and the 12th-century Persian Empire in crisis.
Storytelling is at the heart of this debut novel, with Shaherazade spinning tales and writing verses for her loved ones to help make sense of their often mystifying world. It is poetry she turns to when she stumbles upon the reigning Malik’s beloved wife engaging in adultery. Shaherazade’s revelatory lines result in the woman’s execution and then the swift, brutal murders of the Malik's next three young brides. She is appalled that this man she grew up with has become unrecognizably evil: “Three thousand lives or three, to take even a single life unjustly is to murder all of mankind. Can a soul stained so dark be redeemed?” She atones by offering herself for the position of the Malik’s wife herself, and so begins her perilous journey into the lion’s den. Night after night, Shaherazade whispers stories of daring and magic to her dangerous husband, always promising more detail the next night, thus prolonging her own life for another day. Ahmed revives the ancient tales of One Thousand and One Nights through Shaherazade, who is able to harness her storytelling to effect political change. She spins webs to protect her loved ones and ensnare her enemies at once, drawing the reader ever closer as the boundary between her life and stories begins to blur. Constantly probing her faith and moral judgment, she is profoundly aware of the gray area between right and wrong and the unfathomable role of chance: “I once thought opportunities were ever arising, but now, older, I realize how thinly the door to destiny opens, how quickly it shuts.” Readers will love Shaherazade, who is acutely sensitive to nuance—social, political, and romantic—and refuses to lose her empathy. Ahmed flawlessly weaves together countless threads to create a stunning tapestry revealing the bonds that tie people together and the deceptions that tear them apart. “In fifty years, in a century, in a millennium, who will remember her life, let alone her death, all that preceded it and all that followed?” the narrator asks. Here, Ahmed gives us the voice echoing through eras, Shaherazade’s honeyed stories dripped onto the page.
A gorgeous novel that rejoices in the legacy of the woman who tells tales.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781250887078
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
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
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