A time-jumping—and occasionally dizzying—story of oppression and resilience.
In Meriel’s historical novel, music and politics converge in Apartheid South Africa.
When Laurence Jude opens a jazz club with his friend Albie in 1989 Durban, South Africa, his motive is more than a love of music. For Laurence, a “two-pip [army] lieutenant” whose Jewish Ukrainian grandfather came to South Africa decades prior, opening the club is also his idea of giving back; the narrator is all too aware of his privilege. “How far are we responsible for knowing the truth of our countries?” Laurence asks himself. “And when we do, how far are we responsible for holding them to account?” He describes himself as someone who “[lives] a blessed life on the back of suppressed millions,” adding, “sometimes I don’t know where the web of morality catches me.” At the height of Apartheid, when South Africa is considered the most racially segregated country in the world, opening a place where people of all races could mingle and dance together is hardly par for the course; Mbaqanga music, with its blend of Harlem jazz, swing, and American blues, is the perfect draw for a diverse crowd of people championing an end to National Party rule. As the story jumps back and forth in time from the protagonist’s grandfather’s Ukraine to his present Durban to his future London, Laurence draws parallels between his family’s struggle and that of non-White South Africans during Apartheid. An easy, discursive style of storytelling propels the narrative forward. At times, that pleasant flow comes at the expense of complex, necessary details; characters and scenes are sometimes painted with too broad a brush, which can make them seem merely like tools meant to relay the book’s broader message. Still, Meriel’s lucid prose and commanding knowledge of Ukrainian and South African history give the book a satisfying consistency. After a couple of chapters, patient readers should find themselves syncing up with its unique rhythm.
A time-jumping—and occasionally dizzying—story of oppression and resilience.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2024
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
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