An engaging orphanage tale with enough optimism to counterbalance the narrative’s distressing core.
A coming-of-age novel focuses on a girl born in 1954 who spends her childhood and teenage years in and out of a small-town orphanage.
Rileigh Ophelia Horton, the charming narrator of this disturbing tale, is 6 years old when her unwed mother, Ophelia, suffers from an economic and emotional downward spiral. Ophelia places her daughter in The Margaret Lloyd Stansel’s Children’s Asylum of Abbottville, Georgia. Rileigh soon discovers that most of the kids in the orphanage, who supposedly have no one to care for them, do in fact have one or two living parents or at least an extended family. Despite the condemnation of society and her family, Ophelia had tried to raise the little girl on her own for six years. Sadly, Ophelia’s dependency on alcohol and her proclivity for poor choices in male companions finally took their toll. It is a terrifying first night for Rileigh, who thought her mamma was just taking her on a road trip. But she quickly bonds with four other 6-year-olds— Kirbie Jo Givens, Marla Norris, Loretta Thomas, and Marydale Brown. The five kids form a tight friendship, a sisterhood that lasts well after they have all aged out of the system. The novel is a collection of poignant, sometimes heartbreaking episodes that recall the hopes, bitter disappointments, and triumphs of the next 12 years of Rileigh’s life. Her mother’s visits are painfully rare. Several times, Ophelia brings her back home—until things fall apart again and Rileigh must return to the institution that she calls her “other home.” It is a sad story that contains a surprising buoyancy in spirit. These girls remain resilient in the face of mistreatment, even abuse. Eadie peppers her prose with the vernacular of the time and place, and Rileigh is always ready with a sarcastic, amusing description. Referring to the children in her elementary school who did not come from the orphanage, she says: “We had no more chance to be their friends than a cat in hell with gasoline drawers on.” But the author’s overuse of Rileigh’s standard transitional term anywho becomes irritating.
An engaging orphanage tale with enough optimism to counterbalance the narrative’s distressing core.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2022
ISBN: 979-8410158657
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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