A contemplative, if uneven, cli-fi tale that asks readers to examine their global connections.
A boy with a mysterious connection to animals grows up to become a messenger—warning about the dangers of climate change—in this debut novel.
Having recently moved to a remote part of the Northeast with her preacher husband, isolated and anxious Judith Walker begins to notice strange qualities in her adventurous son, Malach. He can sense weather patterns; he never loses his way in the forest; and he can communicate with animals, all of whom seem supernaturally drawn to him. Over time, more people in their small community learn of Malach’s gifts, including curmudgeonly hermit Roger Stine and Malach’s spunky girlfriend, Ginny Lucette. As he becomes a teenager, Malach’s powers grow, and he is gripped by an intense premonition: If nothing is done, and if people don’t radically change their lives, climate change will decimate the planet. Then Roger dies and leaves Malach with a substantial fortune. He and Ginny use this as the catalyst to embark on a mission to spread Malach’s message in an attempt to save the world. Cohen’s novel moves at a slow and meditative pace, delivering lush, detailed descriptions of the natural world. At times, this pace adds to the dreamy, prophetic quality of Malach’s life. Yet it can also feel stagnating, especially when interpersonal conflicts that could make for thrilling drama are smoothed over with an abundance of lengthy, almost overly rational conversations. Characters are well realized with relatable feelings and doubts, and when the tale focuses on Malach’s relationships with them, the prose echoes with tenderness and pathos. Although some readers will connect deeply with Malach’s pure conservationist ethos, the book’s approach to this can at times feel preachy and even oversimplified as he and his followers espouse the belief that personal responsibility alone is both the basis and cure for climate catastrophe. While rightfully championing the safety of animals and ecosystems, the story feels a bit incomplete. Malach’s crusade seems uninterested in the human cost of climate change that is actively plaguing the world at this moment and the systemic structures that have been erected by those in power to keep people dependent on the very mechanisms that harm them and the planet.
A contemplative, if uneven, cli-fi tale that asks readers to examine their global connections.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73593-460-0
Page Count: 318
Publisher: K + P Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
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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