A masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, by a talented and self-assured writer.
The saga of an Indian family constantly at odds with one another.
The titular complex in Mahajan’s third novel, set in the 1980s and early ’90s, is A-19 Modern Colony, a cluster of apartments in Delhi built shortly after the Indian partition of 1947 by SP Chopra, a late politician who had seven sons and two daughters; his sons’ descendants now populate the dwellings. Among SP’s sons is Laxman, who has strived to live up to his father’s sterling reputation, but fails over and over again. Still, in the words of his great-nephew Mohit, “Say what you would about Laxman Chacha, but he had been exactly what he appeared to be. There was no artifice. He saw the world and he took and took. He never apologized.” That Laxman is a monster is made clear early in the novel, when he rapes Gita, the wife of one of his nephews, Sachin, when she visits Delhi; Gita keeps the assault a secret from her husband, who is at the time in their home in Midland, Michigan. The attack alters the course of Gita’s life; she’s ambivalent about staying in America, and despite Laxman, wants to return to Delhi, to Sachin’s consternation: “If India drew her back, it also repelled her. India was her spouse. What was he?” Meanwhile, Laxman begins an affair with Karishma, the wife of his nephew Brij, and becomes, despite his general incompetence, a political kingmaker. While Mahajan’s novel focuses heavily on Laxman, Gita, and Sachin, other scions of the Chopra family make appearances, and each one is beautifully drawn. He clearly understands the psychology of family, messy as it always is. Mahajan evokes the clashing landscapes of India and Michigan with a sure hand, and displays a keen understanding of Indian society and politics. Though the reader learns in the opening pages that one main character will be murdered by a relative, the novel’s final chapters still manage to be shocking, which is a testament to Mahajan’s genius. This novel is beautiful and unforgettable.
A masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, by a talented and self-assured writer.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593832905
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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