A surprising and beautiful novel about the desire for more.
The tug between the old world and the new is explored in Katiliškis’ novel, first published in Lithuanian in 1957 and now translated into English by Šležas.
The author presents readers with an ensemble of characters, led by the older Petras the Red and the younger Tilius, who begin the novel in a kind of harmony, working together as loggers in Lithuania. Tilius is in love with Agnė, the 17-year-old daughter of Veronika Gužienė who runs the store where the loggers gather for drinks after a hard day’s toil. The passages describing Agnė, and the clandestine yet innocent meetings between the two lovers on a bridge (“The wind ruffled the puddles of water and, keeping low to the ground, came racing from a far-off land”), are some of the most stunning in the novel. Tilius’ desire for more from life, for “something better,” and the uncertainty that stems from this is explored in numerous ways. One is through frequent references to the tension between those working the land and those linked to office work and government. Another comes from Tilius’ meeting with Doveika’s wife; expecting a woman as old as her husband, Tilius instead finds Monika Doveikienė, an attractive young woman with whom he soon begins an affair. The contrast between the seductive Monika and the seemingly naïve Agnė, and how Tilius and Monika hoodwink the elderly Doveika, becomes gripping in the novel’s second half. Though Katiliškis’ prose is lyrical and powerfully descriptive, it’s verbose in a way that muddles the events of the novel, particularly in the first half. However, this isn’t necessarily fatal, as the fresh language makes the book consistently compelling.
A surprising and beautiful novel about the desire for more.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9966304-9-8
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Pica Pica Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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