An emotionally stirring narrative somewhat blunted by structural problems.
In Raydun’s novel, a Jewish family recounts their tale of emigration from the Soviet Union.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, a young student named Benjamin is in Israel with his great-grandparents, Iliya and Frida Mikhailovich; his grandparents, Raya and Sergey; his mother, Rita; and his Aunt Marianna. Eager for a break from the monotony of the lockdown, Benjamin asks his family about their immigration history for a school paper he’s writing. He learns that when Israel sought the repatriation of Jewish people from the Soviet Union, Iliya, his wife, and their children—seeing this as the family’s way out of Ukraine—lied about having Jewish relatives in Israel to secure their departure. The narrative follows the family, which, after contending with suspicious guards and bag searches, takes multiple trains before reaching Vienna. While there, the family struggles with discrimination and culture shock, most notably in the markets: “Raya hated the supermarkets in Vienna. The audacity of the abundance set her skin on fire.” Later, the family heads to Rome to be closer to the American Embassy, with their sights ultimately set on immigrating to the United States. Rome is where the women of the family (save for Raya, who is tormented by her fears of the outside world and the ills it may bestow upon her children) thrive as Frida opens an unofficial medical clinic and Rita quickly learns the Italian language. Marianna often goes to the beach with Iliya, and it is there she catches the eye of a young Italian boy named Luca. (As her mother notes, “Marianna did inherit every family member’s best features and left the less favorable ones to her sister.”) The men have less luck: Sergey feels intense guilt because his desire for a better life for his children meant abandoning his parents, and Iliya experiences an emotional crisis, thinking, “If this was his life’s dream coming true, then why was he feeling as if he were being buried alive the second he was finally free?” In alternating, present-set chapters, Benjamin peppers his family with questions and has them explain aspects of their story that are foreign to his experience as “the spoiled brat of the family.”
Raydun’s tale bears emotional heft, ironically stemming mainly from the two characters who receive the least amount of focus in the story: Iliya has dementia in the present, but his brief instants of lucidity are moving; equally stirring is Rita’s present-day understanding of herself as an afterthought in the family, essentially left to fend for herself. Unfortunately, more time is given to Marianna’s love life. The story is an important one, rooted in actual immigration history, but the prose could be a bit more elevated. Additionally, while the lockdown chapters are necessary, the switching between past and present is too frequent and interrupts the fluidity of the narrative. Still, this is an engaging tale about a specific wave of immigration about which relatively little has been explored.
An emotionally stirring narrative somewhat blunted by structural problems.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798988085911
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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