This nonlinear narrative is part rant, part rave, part extended Jewish joke, part queer, Marxist fever dream.
A dying Jewish woman on the Upper East Side struggles with her relationship with her queer child, her former best friend, and her memories.
Rosenberg’s sophomore effort is quite a departure from its predecessor, the 18th-century historical novel Confessions of the Fox (2018). It combines manic Jewish-flavored humor à la Joshua Cohen or Tova Reich with a surrealist avian element à la Marie-Helene Bertino with a boundary-pushing satire of homophobia that floats somewhere in the universe of Benedict Nguyen and Sacha Baron Cohen. A self-described yenta from Flatbush, Barbara Rosenberg lies bedridden in her apartment at Second Avenue and East 69th Street, high off her gourd on OxyContin, reviewing her life story and its many disappointments, framed as “my confession, my apology, my prayer” to Karl Marx, “god of impossible things.” In the words of her erstwhile best friend Sugar Becker, “if Barbra Streisand had been tragically prevented from becoming the star that she was meant to be, and [was] consigned to starring only on the stage of a small rent-controlled apartment overlooking an exhaust shaft”—that would be our heroine. Her delirium proceeds apace as she becomes certain that her child, one Jordana Rosenberg, has turned into a giant bird, and reels through scenes including her mother-in-law’s funeral, movie dates with her late husband, and benighted shopping expeditions with the menswear-loving Jordana, whom she eventually whisked from the gates of Wesleyan University—“which I don’t know if you know, but is a not-so-elite place populated entirely by lesbians”—to an army camp in Israel. This leads to a shocking plot twist and a coda taking the novel in an unexpected direction. Among the pleasures along the way are the author’s many exuberant descriptions of smells, for example, “that sharp peculiar scent of a family: the animal musk of two mouth-breathing adults, the sweet synthetic lemon of Jean Naté After Bath Splash evaporating off the night-cooled flesh of my arms, my daughter’s wet cornflake breath, & the smoky off-gas of the cracked rubber feet of her pajamas.” Rosenberg somehow secretes the hints of genuine emotion that runs beneath the book’s generally broad approach in these pointillist descriptions.
This nonlinear narrative is part rant, part rave, part extended Jewish joke, part queer, Marxist fever dream.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780593448007
Page Count: 304
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
Simply charming.
A lovable gaggle of competitive quilters attempts to defy the odds.
The ladies of the Ogden Quilters Association are gearing up for another Simpton Family Quilting Extravaganza, and this year’s nationwide competition is extra special: It’s taking place just an hour away in Smithfield, Utah. For Betty Lou Dearden, OQA’s leader and most faithful member, who never misses a Wednesday quilting night and delights in reading the bylaws, this is a dream come true—a chance to put Utah quilting on the map. But beneath her bubbly surface, Betty Lou is struggling—longtime member Leera Smeeth has been passive aggressively shooting down Betty Lou’s ideas and attacking her sense of self for years (see: a particularly biting comment about her beloved peach bathroom); her children rarely visit; and her husband’s health is declining. And to top it off, OQA is down a member since Terry Blackfoot left following the oft-referenced but never explained “needle incident.” OQA’s remaining members—flighty but lovable Lucy Jones; dependable Diane Williams and her roommate, Alice Flagstaff; and innovative Candace Braithwaite—need more support. Enter Byron Grant, a gay sewing store manager who deals in rumor and gossip as much as in thread and batting, and his best friend, shy, artistic Rob, both younger than the youngest OQA member by about 30 years. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in the bylaws expressly prohibiting men. And so this quirky group of artisans attempts to dethrone the always-winning, clearly evil Logan Quilters Society (“We don’t hate anyone!...We just don’t prefer to associate with cheaters”), all the while wrestling with interpersonal conflict, trauma, and, let’s face it, a few tacky ideas. The plot is silly and largely predictable, but McCann’s prose is bursting at the seams with humor and genuinely tender, touching moments. You’ll root for these misfits from Page 1.
Simply charming.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798890920461
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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