Sharp, beautifully textured writing.
A young girl growing up in the Bahamas in the 1970s must navigate obvious and hidden dangers alike in Justicz’s novel.
Twelve-year-old Domini Dawes, known to her friends as Dede, is a white English girl who lives in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. The novel opens with her pinned to a boat in fear as a storm rages all around her. The story then backtracks to describe Dede’s life prior to becoming lost at sea, a life in which she already appears to be cast adrift. Her mother’s boyfriend, Silvio, is reputed to be “moving drugs” and shows little interest in her. Her mother, Anita, is a croupier who leaves Dede to her own devices each evening while she works at the local casino. Bullied at school by Jethro, the son of a bigwig politician, Dede has few allies. Johnnie McGuinn, the building manager at her apartment complex, seems to be one of the few people who are eager to spend time with her, but McGuinn has an unhealthy interest in prepubescent girls. Ethel Edgecombe, a sage Bahamian woman who also lives in her building, keeps a watchful eye over Dede, but McGuinn is intent on worming his way into her confidence. Frustrations at school, coupled with the sickening desires of the building manager, lead Dede to take a boat and head recklessly out to sea. She finds herself washed ashore on a strange island and under the guardianship of a woman named Harmony Knowles; Dede is unsure if Harmony is a figment of her imagination or real. Will Dede make it back to Freeport, and will the men in her life pay for the damage they have inflicted on her?
In this finely crafted novel, the author effortlessly builds complex psychological portraits of her main characters. Dede is ferociously indignant yet childishly naïve, particularly when unwittingly renaming her predator, “Johnnie Angel”: “Mr. McGuinn. It’s my nickname for him. He’s always sunburning his forehead.” In the character of McGuinn, Justicz convincingly takes readers into the revolting mind of a pedophile: “The bra she now wore; her breasts had grown in the past three months, and she was shaving under her arms. If she hadn’t already, she’d soon go through the change that ruined them all.” The novel presents a nuanced treatment of complex themes, from male domination of women to issues of racial inequality. When Ethel, a Bahamian by birth, recalls attending university in England, the slur “over-sized darky” remains with her. Yet she also feels like an outsider attending an upscale event in Freeport: “Still trying to impress a social club that had no room for the likes of her.” Justicz also has a captivatingly unique descriptive style: When Dede grips the armrests of her chair in anguish, the author notes: “If she squeezed any tighter, the truth would come out of the furniture.” The final part of the novel, which revisits the Bahamas in the 21st century, unnecessarily tries to tie up the loose ends a little too tightly—but the book’s conclusion presents some unexpected twists that are definitely worth waiting for. A stirring celebration of strong-minded women, this is a superb offering by a truly talented author.
Sharp, beautifully textured writing.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781959984115
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Fomite
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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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