A lovingly researched tale whose rich setting and vivid scenery shine throughout.
Barr fictionalizes a historically significant stretch of time in the Persian Empire in this short historical novel.
In the author’s follow-up to Cocktails and Peacocks Feathers: An Anthology of Poetry (2024), readers are transported to 334 B.C.E. Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Barr’s young protagonist, Andronicus, is a Macedonian man of ambition who’s recently married a woman named Idahlia. Searching for more than the simple existence they were born into, Andronicus and Idahlia leave their old home behind and venture into war-torn Asia Minor, ruled at the time by the inimitable Alexander the Great, who’s busy marshalling his troops to ransack and conquer the Persians, whom he believes have gotten “too comfortable.” As Alexander moves, so, too, do Andronicus and Idahlia, along with their poet friend Leo. They settle for a time in Persepolis in 330 B.C.E., where the pair make ends meet with simple work and bartering. Meanwhile, readers are introduced to Roxane, the daughter of Baron and Leila Oxyartes, the former a powerful authority in the region. Still just a child, Roxane fusses in the ceremonial wedding dress she’s forced to wear to marry her half brother, Shapur: “The old blue dress is itchy and Roxane imagines the tiny creatures that nibble away on its fabric, the same creatures that feast on her mother’s silk dresses that hang like faded flowers on the lichen-encrusted walls of their hut.” Such is the existence Roxane leads in Sogdia, a place where such weddings of convenience are commonplace. Things are not much better for Andronicus and Idahlia. Just as the couple’s hardscrabble existence finally begins to seem untenable, fate draws them toward a meeting with Roxane that will alter the course of their lives.
While Barr’s novel is sometimes more of a meandering period piece than a propulsive narrative, readers can easily forgive such lapses; on the whole, the author’s research and authority over the subject matter are impressive. Barr’s richly ambient descriptions and vivid landscapes transport readers to the harsh climes of these ancient Persian lands. This is no small feat, since the novel is set in a time so long past that conjuring it requires some truly imaginative flourishes in the prose, which Barr renders in often simple but delicately chosen details: “The cave they have chosen has been made welcoming. The brazier is Bah’s. It is fine, tall and highly polished, and its light is soft. The best carpets and furs have been laid around the cave’s interior. Roxane finds the basket. It is tall and of fine weave and inside are the fragrant oranges eaten only on special occasions.” True, readers may not find the sort of unforgettable characters who are often prized in historical fiction set in ancient times (Andronicus, while an apt narrator, is not especially striking), but Barr’s text is just short enough that the characters are able to carry the weight of the narrative through to the final pages.
A lovingly researched tale whose rich setting and vivid scenery shine throughout.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780473742614
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2026
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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