A sharp-edged tale in verse of colonial suppression, resistance, and survival.
An epic poem, much honored in Sweden since its publication in 2018, that charts the fortunes of a Sámi community against opposing nationalisms.
There was a time when Norway and Sweden were united as a single country. The union dissolved in 1905, and eight years later, as Sámi author Axelsson’s epic begins, a boundary is forming between the two that impedes the free movement of a reindeer-herding Arctic community. “Once May Day passed we were allowed to cross the border into Norway,” says one speaker, while “the Swede he dammed // And the river was left / muffled and silent.” In the face of this degradation, where the Sámi are barred from herding grounds, ancient migratory routes are blocked, and villages are swallowed by rising waters, a young man dies accidentally, a ghost whose presence hovers over the generations. He laments to his distraught father: “Didn’t you hear me // Among the seabirds / as you came walking / with your summer-fat / reindeer,” and his grave will forever be unquiet. Fast-forward two generations, and the Sámi have themselves been herded into government villages, their children packed off to boarding schools to be acculturated as Swedes; one matriarch, subjected to that cultural annihilation, recalls questions from her daughter: “Tell me what it / was like at the Nomad School / Mama // I’m supposed to write / an essay about / you in school.” Adds one character, Lise, speaking a century after the epic begins, “And I did not / want to talk about it.” As Axelsson charts the story of the Sámi under colonial rule, the reader will be reminded of the injuries done to Indigenous peoples everywhere. But there is at least some resolution: Axelsson describes present-day Sámi activists fighting to regain control of traditional lands, with young descendants teaching their elders about their culture. Such is the case with another matriarch, Sandra, who’s “Trying / as a grown woman / to learn Sámi / with her children.”
A sharp-edged tale in verse of colonial suppression, resistance, and survival.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593535455
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
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
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
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