An astute addition to a decade of discussions about consent and predation.
A middle-aged novelist revisits complicated relationships with men in her past and present.
Christensen’s late-breaking #MeToo novel revolves around a character named Julia Heimdahl, who shares many details of the author’s biography and career, as recounted in a previous memoir, Blue Plate Special (2013), and in a personal history on her website. Julia is appearing at a book festival at her alma mater in the Pacific Northwest to promote her latest, a memoir titled Don’t Let It Bring You Down: A Compendium of Complicated Relationships; excerpts from the memoir are interspersed throughout the novel. Julia is on a panel with memoirist and literary biographer Ellis Blackwell—picture real-life author Blake Bailey, whom he resembles. Over the course of the festival weekend, Blackwell attempts to bond with and even seduce Julia, hoping to get her on his side in advance of a troubling accusation he knows is about to break in the media. Julia does have some sympathy for social outlaws: While she’s now happily partnered with a musician 20 years her junior, she’s still smarting from the punitive reaction of her community in Brooklyn when she had an extramarital affair at the tail end of her crumbling marriage. The title of the novel refers to a compliment Julia had previously been proud to receive from men, but she becomes less enthralled with it as she begins to examine her own complicity in abusive relationships and the roots of her own internalized misogyny. Christensen’s adeptness at character development and psychological analysis shines as she depicts the complexities of Julia’s interactions with the frenemies and colleagues she runs into at the conference. She also candidly addresses the question posed at the panel, “What’s it like having a boyfriend who’s twenty years younger than you?” Many readers will find this topic as interesting as the riveted conference audience does—and we get more juicy details than they do.
An astute addition to a decade of discussions about consent and predation.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780063464315
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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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