A thought-provoking exploration of themes of love set against the backdrop of World War II.
In Lang-Slattery’s historical novel, a Jewish mother and daughter contend with growing danger at the onset of World War II.
Beginning in 1939, the narrative follows Clara, a widowed Jewish mother of three adult children, as she makes arrangements to flee Nazi Germany. Though the war has not yet started, the regime has begun to gradually restrict her freedoms and confiscate her possessions. Before her daughter, Edith, returns to London with her English husband, she asks Clara to find and destroy the diary she kept as a teenager in addition to old love letters sent by an Aryan boyfriend. Their relationship was illegal, and she worries that if it’s discovered, her erstwhile lover, Charlie, could face serious consequences. Clara reads the diary and letters before burning them. They tell a passionate love story that ends in the couple’s separation and Edith’s departure for England in 1936, leading Clara to reflect on the lack of love she felt in her own marriage. Clara begins falling for Albert, a local doctor, but their relationship is tragically cut short when Clara receives information that the Nazis are going to begin forcibly relocating Jewish residents. She flees to join Edith in England just in time, but Albert must stay behind to take care of his elderly mother. In London, Clara worries about Albert’s safety; Edith, now a mother herself, laments that she doesn’t feel the same passion in her marriage that she did with Charlie. Through the lens of Clara’s and Edith’s experiences, Lang-Slattery deftly depicts the challenges of developing romantic relationships in a world consumed by a rising tide of fear, anxiety, and bigotry. The letters and diary entries are particularly well written, some containing censored redactions from authorities that help make the setting feel even more dangerous and real. (“It is impossible to explain [redacted] of life here. We have been issued [redacted], but ours are special.”) While the novel’s pacing is somewhat slow, readers looking for a well-crafted character study will find much to appreciate here.
A thought-provoking exploration of themes of love set against the backdrop of World War II.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2026
ISBN: 9798986201313
Page Count: 408
Publisher: PacificBookworks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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