An engaging and often lighthearted take on the nuances of relationships.
Dorfman offers a study of tenuous connections between several coworkers at a school-portrait company in this episodic novel.
A man named Blake works for a company called SmilePosts, a company that takes official class photos for elementary schools. Readers meet him as he breaks down crying in front of a very confused fourth grader. This might not seem like the setup for a character-driven soap opera of epic proportions, but that’s what the work becomes. Blake remains as the narrator throughout, even as the book focuses on different SmilePosts employees in each of three sections, and there is a host of secondary characters that readers also get to know and love. Linda and Ed’s friendship crosses the line into an emotional affair; Linda is divorced and struggles with infertility, while Ed tries to convince himself that a stale marriage is worth it for the stability. Dana and Ethan’s brief romantic entanglement forces them both to grow up as her reality as a teenage mother clashes with his spoiled stoner persona. The narrator finally gets his own section in the last third of the book, in which Blake examines how his perpetual optimism in his early 20s is souring as he approaches 30. This self-reflection effectively piggybacks on the story of his growing friendship with fellow employee Josie and his attraction to another one of his coworkers, Hailey. As the book winds to a close, Blake has seemingly disclosed all of the twists and turns and secrets of his colleagues—but then he reveals a twist that may lead some readers to audibly gasp. Overall, this novel presents a series of compelling character sketches with wry humor and heartfelt revelations. Along the way, it also manages to tackle difficult topics with a surprising earnestness, including unwanted pregnancy, faith, and self-harm.
An engaging and often lighthearted take on the nuances of relationships.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985579116
Page Count: 426
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
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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