An affecting novel of oppression and liberation.
In Dempster’s novel, a young Syrian woman and her family feel the oppression of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and when war erupts, it sends their lives into further turmoil.
Eighteen-year-old Layal Wassef and her mother, Nooda; her brother, Tarek; and her father, Jorem, live in Raqqa, Syria, in the early 2010s. Layal is preparing to leave to attend university in England, and Tarek is preparing to study in Jordan. But one night, soldiers come looking for Tarek while he’s at a meeting of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group. When they can’t find him, they arrest Jorem, and the family’s lives are thrown into chaos. Soon, the rebels take Raqqa, but eventually, the authoritarian Islamic State group takes over. Layal and her journalist mother lose their independence under strict new laws, and they witness horrors when someone is accused of going against the caliphate. Layal endures traumas and dreams of escape, but she’s unsure of how to get out of the heavily guarded city. After a tragedy, the mother and daughter must decide whether to risk death while escaping or to face a likely demise at home. Dempster’s story is fast-paced and brings the gruesome realities of war to life. The author notes that she lived in Iran as a teenager and that she’s since traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, and her fictional tale has an authoritative feel. Many readers will gain a better understanding of the different groups involved in the conflict and what it was like to be a woman under oppressive regimes. The book is a delicate, well-judged balance of dialogue and description as it presents the points of view of both Layal and Nooda. It’s an often chilling and eye-opening work that should be widely read, especially by citizens of countries involved in the Syrian Civil War.
An affecting novel of oppression and liberation.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9798310256958
Page Count: 281
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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