A novel that makes up for its lack of depth with sharp storytelling.
In this offbeat historical epic, a prosperous Jewish family from Latvia reinvents itself when it’s divided by 20th-century realities and differing dreams of success.
The catalyst for the Mendel family’s uprooting is an encounter 14-year-old Mina has in the woods, where she goes to gather mushrooms. In fairy tale–like fashion, she encounters instant danger in the form of a group of Bolshevik boys whose cocky presence excites her. After her older brother Jossel learns that she kissed one of them, he whisks her away from Riga, leaving the rest of their family behind, to keep their father from forcing Mina into an arranged marriage. Jossel and Mina hope to go to America, but after World War I thwarts those plans, they settle in a mostly friendly Jewish community in Liverpool, by which time Jossel has been roped into marriage by a woman he met on the ship that took them there. Soon enough, Jossel leaves his wife for another woman, and lonely Mina impetuously marries a bland fellow whose life her brother saved while off fighting the war. We then follow Mina’s daughter, Paula, as she attempts to hide her Jewish identity, act like a privileged Brit, and lose her virginity. Only belatedly, we learn what became of Mina and Jossel’s bad-sheep brother, Itzik, who embraced the USSR in his quest for power, and their ill-fated parents. Shifting styles to reflect shifting times, Grant flirts with soap opera and R-rated noir. Acting as a leitmotif, the story of Mina’s adventures in the forest gets passed down as oral history, ultimately becoming a movie. Those looking for romance in this saga, or much in the way of reflection as the nonstop narrative motors on, will be disappointed. But the undercurrent of menace and refusal to indulge in sentimentality should appeal to readers looking for something different.
A novel that makes up for its lack of depth with sharp storytelling.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781638931683
Page Count: 288
Publisher: SJP Lit/Zando
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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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