Women’s friendships in a world where they have little freedom shape a quietly moving book.
The lives of women in 15th-century China are illuminated in this engrossing novel.
Tan Yunxian was a real historical figure who published a book about her career as a physician, but little is known about her personal life. See creates a rich story about a girl born into an aristocratic family. That accident of birth should have written her fate: limited education, bound feet, arranged marriage, childbirth, and a life spent entirely behind the walls of family compounds. She doesn’t escape all of those things, but after the early death of her mother, she’s raised by her paternal grandparents, who are both doctors, and given an unusually advanced education, including in the healing arts they practice. Yunxian’s life is constrained by rules governing her class and gender, and she is literally never alone—even when she sleeps, her maid sleeps at the foot of her bed. Her family’s wealthy extended household has an elaborate structure, and she learns early to negotiate the gradations among first wives, second wives, and concubines and to recognize that, like them, she is valued for beauty and fertility and little else. She breaks a rule, though, when she becomes friends with Meiling, the daughter of Midwife Shi, who delivers the family’s babies. As Yunxian’s grandmother says, midwives are “indispensable”—male doctors are not allowed to look at or touch their female patients—but they’re also reviled for their contact with blood and practice of abortion. The lifelong friendship between Yunxian and Meiling will have an indelible impact on both women, and in a later portion of the book they’ll even be involved in an attempted murder trial. Yunxian’s arranged marriage is a fairly happy one, but as she matures, she grows more focused on practicing as a physician. She sometimes has insight into the inequities of feudal China, especially the treatment of working-class women. But she’s hardly revolutionary; even though she experienced the brutal pain of foot binding and watched her mother die of an infection caused by it, she binds the feet of her three daughters without question. Although the book’s pace can sometimes slow, it’s packed with historical detail.
Women’s friendships in a world where they have little freedom shape a quietly moving book.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781982117085
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
