A richly drawn story of religious and scholastic devotion.
In Holt-Browning’s debut novel, a medieval teen and a contemporary scholar lead parallel lives.
Wenfair Abbey, England, 1370: After the death of her mother, 12-year-old Elinor is sent to serve Lady Adela, an anchoress who, for the past four years, has been sealed in a bricked-up cell within the walls of the abbey (an anchoress is willingly and permanently isolated in such a chamber to pursue a solitary life of prayer and mortification). “It is morning and the sun must be risen high, but it is like night in here,” writes Elinor of her new home, which she sees more as a prison than a place of God. At first, it seems to Elinor that Lady Adela does nothing but pray, but she soon learns that the women of the village visit her at night to ask for help with a very specific problem. Stillburne, New York, 2017: Liz Pace works as an adjunct professor of medieval studies at the local college. She’s hoping to expand her dissertation on purgatory into a book, which could lead to a tenure-track position, but a miscarriage throws her life off balance. Hoping to expand her study to include anchoresses, she takes a researching trip to England, where she finds an old book of hours—one that seems to connect to the mysterious Adela and Elinor of Wenfair Abbey. The narration alternates fluidly between Elinor and Liz, whose shared interest in the psychological state of the anchoress keeps the short chapters all moving in the same direction. Holt-Browning is a talented storyteller, summoning the dreary world of 14th-century England in vivid sensorial detail. Here, Elinor is embarrassed to have to pass chamber pots through the window to an assisting monk: “I was ready to empty our pots myself, but I was not prepared to hand them to a man, practically a stranger. And certainly not to Brother Joseph. I blush to think of his kind eyes again—which I did not expect to meet over a chamber pot.” The plot offers no big twists and few moments of high drama, but the novel is an enjoyable read nonetheless, illuminating a peculiar corner of historical religiosity for a wider audience.
A richly drawn story of religious and scholastic devotion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781958972472
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2024
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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