A politically charged vision of what our civil strife might look like just a bit down the road.
Road trip meets corporate intrigue meets political violence in an ultrapolarized near-future America.
It’s 2045. AI runs the world. Earth’s first trillionaire has “overdosed en route to Mars,” and his successor in the world of the superwealthy is conducting eldritch explorations of animal intelligence to possibly nefarious ends. Prologue to all that, in Andersen’s latest, is a devastating attack on Oklahoma City by fascist militia as America is dividing, the blue United States facing off against the red Free American Republic. Rationalizes Natalie Frederick, a dual citizen living in red Tennessee, “Yes, the politics of Disunion are still driving some people to kill, but—grading on a curve—three or five or ten deaths a week among 375 million basically rounds down to zero.” Andersen populates this bitter dissolution with real characters, from Trump (who dies of “a massive brainstem stroke while on the famous escalator to a 20th anniversary celebration of his first presidential candidacy”) to a fulminating Tucker Carlson, whipping up right-wing frenzy from the confines of West Texas. Enjoying a supermajority with MAGA’s exodus, plenty of real-life Democrats figure, too. Natalie’s estranged husband is bound up in that AI world, one of its denizens a thoughtful giant tortoise, living in deep-blue San Francisco with a daughter who describes herself as “a self-absorbed narcissistic teen. Who can pass for self-reliant.” Natalie and Asher reunite to take Logan across the two countries on a tour of potential college campuses—guess where the best schools are—where they see the damaging effects of national divorce, a warning that they might rethink their own relationship. The AI part of the story is a little undercooked and the political commentary none too subtle, but overall it’s an effective exercise in dystopian fiction with some nicely developed thriller elements in the mix.
A politically charged vision of what our civil strife might look like just a bit down the road.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9781984801371
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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