A finely written character study of a multifaceted doctor.
A sequel focuses on a complicated physician from Texas.
In Albedo’s follow-up to his novel Nutshell (2021), Dr. Chase Callaway is facing difficulties again. Chase is a surgeon in California. Anyone who thinks a bright and sure-footed physician like Chase would do well on the West Coast would be wrong. From frivolous malpractice suits to struggles with colleagues (at one point, he feels he is being “bushwhacked by a bunch of no-talent scum”), Chase has a tough road. He develops a drug addiction to boot. Although Chase becomes a “a student, then a disciple, of psychopharmacology,” his need for stimulation eventually has him heading back to Texas. There, he enters rehab. In the irony of all ironies, he has to dry out at the same mental health facility where he used to work as a psychiatric aide. What’s more, two weeks after his discharge from rehab, he becomes the chief of surgery at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. Despite such challenges, Chase winds up devoting himself to breast cancer research. As things seem to finally come together, he feels he can “sit back and let the excellence unfold.” Unfortunately, his struggles are only beginning. This installment of Chase’s saga overflows with biting, humorous prose. When Chase is in the mental institution, patients are advised to drink water in the morning. The schizophrenics in the audience “were enthralled by the prospect of such easy eradication of their demons.” Later, Chase advises Dr. Porter Piscotel to “know thyself, Porter, know thyself, even if thyself is a freakin’ asshole.” In contrast, some aspects of the storyline can prove needlessly lengthy. Chase’s dogged fight against breast cancer (and his dream of creating a “Breast Pavilion”) includes budget and equipment discussions that do not quite leap from the page. But when it becomes clear that he has a “lethal rage” growing inside him, twists are afoot. After all, who could have predicted Chase would end up in a drug rehab program? There are more surprises where that came from.
A finely written character study of a multifaceted doctor.Pub Date: May 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68433-991-4
Page Count: 452
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: June 29, 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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