A potent and emotionally stirring depiction of how violence shapes everyday life.
Berman presents a collection of short stories tracing the emotional impact of gun violence in the United States.
In an opening note, the author tells readers that her motivation for writing these tales is “to give voice to those who did not survive” the “epidemic of gun violence in this country.” The collection is arranged into 26 short stories, alphabetically ordered by victims’ first names. Each begins with some background details and the phrase, “I am a statistic.” Some stories are clearly inspired by recent events, such as the story of an elderly man killed in a temple on Rosh Hashanah, a teenager killed in Buffalo, and several others set in schools around the country. Although many stories explore similar themes, Berman is careful to avoid repetition, often building scenes in which characters (and readers) anticipate gun violence, only to have expectations subverted. For example, in “Ginger,” a climate activist fears an attack at a protest, only for violence to unfold at her daughter’s soccer match. There’s also variety among the author’s choice of subjects, which include children, teens, middle-aged and elderly people, and a range of ethnicities, sexualities, and lifestyles. One notably surprising story, “Kylor,” features a pro-gun activist who’s excited to visit a gun show and purchase a new rifle. That said, with so many vignettes circling toward similar endings, occasional overlap and repetition are inevitable. The first time Berman describes a shooter at a middle-school end-of-year assembly (“a young man wearing a bandana that covers half his face, standing on the stairs at the far-left of the stage. He is holding a large rifle and pointing it at all the winners, then quickly flashing it around the hall”), it’s shocking, but when readers begin to anticipate a killer’s eventual emergence, the suspense wanes. This may, of course, be intentional, but it’s a point that could have been made in fewer than 26 stories. Nonetheless, the individual and cumulative impact of these works remains striking.
A potent and emotionally stirring depiction of how violence shapes everyday life.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781647429287
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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