A novel that is as exhilarating as it is moving; a fine achievement.
A young Southern boy travels to the Middle East to find his father in this delightful and intimate modern epic.
Guggenheim fellow and Whiting Award winner Edwards harnesses the best of his storytelling powers to tell the tale of Ramadan Ramsey, a young boy who is at once blessed with the fierce love and protection of his maternal grandmother, Mama Joon, and whose privileged place in her heart sparks the enmity of the rest of his family. The novel begins in 1999, when Mustafa Totah, a Syrian immigrant in New Orleans, takes a job at his uncle Adad’s convenience store. There, he meets Alicia Ramsey, a Black native of the city who beguiles him into breaking his Ramadan fast before sunset one day. Their love affair provokes the ire of uncle Adad, who informs Mustafa's family in Syria and sends him back. Unbeknownst to Mustafa, however, Alicia is pregnant with his child, whom she names Ramadan in an attempt to atone for having coaxed his father into breaking religious laws. Tragedy strikes again when Alicia dies of meningitis, leaving Ramadan under the guardianship of her mother, Mama Joon, who lavishes him with affection and, much to the chagrin of her eldest daughter, Clarissa, plans to bequeath him everything she owns, including her house. When Mama Joon dies, 12-year-old Ramadan decides to flee the wrath of the envious Clarissa and her vicious sons, traveling to the Middle East to find his father. Borrowing from the episodic structure of epic tales, the novel sustains a swift pace that only picks up momentum as it advances. The narrative voice is highly engaging, often combining humor and pathos in a single sentence so that even tragic events are imbued with lightness.
A novel that is as exhilarating as it is moving; a fine achievement.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-301203-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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