A profound, witty, and compassionate work with a compelling protagonist and message.
A 14-year-old girl tries to make sense of a raven’s announcement that she’s a prophet in Heinrichs’ novel.
Call her Jonah. The former Joan Mudgett adopted her father’s name after he disappeared—the same day her mother was murdered, more than a year ago. She’s certain that he had nothing to do with the crime, and she wants only to find the true “evil doer.” It’s now early January, and Joan lives alone in the family house at the foot of Jumper Mountain in New Hampshire, helped out by her teacher and friend, Mary Sullivan. When she’s not rereading Moby-Dick, she often patrols her surroundings on skis; on one such outing, she’s greeted by a talking raven who says, “I am Gabriel, come to appoint you humanity’s most sacred voice.” According to the raven, her prophecies are supposed to “create a favorable carom, a swerve, a divergence” to steer humanity away from terrible events. After other kids at school start a rumor that she hears voices, she’s pressed for predictions, so she makes some at random, expecting them to come to nothing—but they appear to come true instead. Joan decides to admit that she really is a prophet, with her message being that the world is too noisy: “Think how much more you can learn by shutting up. Being quiet.” As the quietness movement hilariously snowballs (and is monetized), Joan finally learns the truth about her parents. Heinrichs has also written three nonfiction books on rhetoric, and his debut novel is utterly engaging and complex as it combines comedy, tragedy, a coming-of-age story, social commentary, timely reflections on the Covid-19 pandemic, and scintillating philosophy about the biosphere. As the raven says, humans miss the beauty of other species’ communications: “You are surrounded by creatures who compose poetry and sparkling dialogues with smells, colors, shadows, and eloquent pauses.” Joan’s outsize impact on world events is made more plausible by her enormous charisma, courage, and independence over the course of the novel.
A profound, witty, and compassionate work with a compelling protagonist and message.Pub Date: March 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73672-660-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gavia Books
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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