A meditative tale about rediscovering one’s true self that will appeal to readers reaching midlife.
In this novel, a recent empty nester struggles with whether to leave her husband as she searches for a more fulfilling life.
Shortly after Jennifer’s two children reach young adulthood and move out of the house, she realizes she’s not interested in staying trapped in a mediocre relationship with her husband, Mark. Just as she prepares to tell Mark that they should separate, Jenn’s father shows up, announcing that her mother has died. No longer the time to seek a divorce, Jenn retreats into herself. When she stumbles on old diaries from her youth, she remembers her first love, Thomas “Tripp” Porter. As she reminisces about their great romance, she searches for him on social media and discovers that he messaged her seven years earlier through Facebook. She responds to the message and receives a reply almost instantly. In the decades since they’ve seen each other, Tripp has also married and built a life for himself. Even so, the pair begin communicating via text and phone, and Jenn feels seen for the first time in years. She even works up the nerve to speak to Mark about her discontent, and they begin counseling. As Jenn tries to find her true self, she experiments with moving out of the house and enjoying the freedom of sexual exploration with other partners. She’s on a mission to discover what will finally satisfy her. Told entirely in the first person from Jenn’s perspective, Pursell’s book reads more like a memoir than a novel, with a great deal of introspection and reflection on past events (“Memories are an amazing thing. They allow us to hold on to a part of our past in powerful ways”). Similarly, limited details about the setting throughout the story lead the narration to feel more like diary entries. The author tackles difficult issues of how adults should approach the later portions of their lives and how to balance second chances against the idea of starting fresh, taking a deep dive into those questions with insight and grace. As the story progresses, so too does the explicit sexual content, which unfortunately begins to feel clinical and awkward instead of steamy. Even so, the narrator’s journey toward her own truth will likely speak to many 50-somethings considering their own life paths.
A meditative tale about rediscovering one’s true self that will appeal to readers reaching midlife.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781639887958
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2023
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
