A compelling story about life and art with vivid characters and an engaging setting.
Berman’s historical novel, on the triumphs and trials of a female artist, paints a picture of bohemian life while discussing deeper questions about the creative process.
In 1760s Venice, Angelica Kauffman struggles to make her mark as a painter while supporting herself and her father. Although she makes a living painting reproductions, she wishes to pursue artwork about historical subjects, which brings in less money. She catches a lucky break when a British noblewoman spots her talent and takes her to London to seek her fortune. Angelica becomes a great success, thanks to constant commissions for portraits and paintings of historical subjects. She eventually meets and befriends other artists, including the celebrated portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds. Despite Angelica’s determination to never marry, she becomes preoccupied with a mysterious Swedish count, and their relationship takes an expected turn. Later, Angelica and her family return to Italy, where she falls in with a community of artists and intellectuals in Rome. She’s intrigued by a man who turns out to be the celebrated author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; they feel an instant connection. Their friendship, intense but platonic, deepens quickly as they share similar philosophies on art, nature, and love. As she contemplates her future, Angelica must figure out what kind of love she wants, and how a woman in a sexist society can enjoy her freedom. Berman’s story of Angelica’s adventures among the nobility and other bohemian artists paints an illuminating yet subtly drawn picture of 18th-century society and the art world, in particular. Angelica’s commitment to independence is steely and determined, and in scenes where she’s at her easel, it’s easy to grasp how inspiration strikes and a painting comes together: “I paint the faint suggestion of an angelic face into the clouds. No one else will likely ever notice it, but my eye goes directly to the departed soul.” Those looking for steamy romance will be disappointed, but Angelica’s absolute commitment to living her own life is intense and refreshing.
A compelling story about life and art with vivid characters and an engaging setting.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427887
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2024
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
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