A vivid examination of how troubles from the past affect an unfolding future.
Connelly offers a debut novel about a woman who revisits the site of a life-changing trauma.
In 1971, Martha “Marti” Farrell was a 14-year-old living her hometown of Chatham, Vermont, when she fell under the spell of 27-year-old high-school art teacher Spencer Douglas, who would let students hang out at his house to smoke cannabis and listen to music. With some of the female students, however, Spencer behaved inappropriately, and his interactions with Marti involved statutory rape, which led to her getting pregnant. Marti’s teenage neighbor and friend Peter Colganoffered to help her cover up what happened by claiming that the baby was his, but Marti decided to have an abortion instead. The narrative jumps forward to the year 2000, and Marti is back in Vermont with her 14-year-old daughter, Tess. Marti hasn’t been back home in years, and she finds out new things about her old town, including what became of Peter and other people she knew. She also must contend with ongoing conflict with Tess, who had wanted to spend the summer back in Brooklyn, New York, where she and Marti now live. Meanwhile, she gathers the courage to confront Spencer face-to-face, as she continues to struggle with the damage that he caused. Over the course of the narrative, Connelly paints a realistic, distinct and disturbing picture of the abusive relationship between Spencer and Marti, and as Marti’s experiences difficulties in life, reader will feel the sting of what she goes through. The earlier scenes set in 2000, however, are less affecting, due in part to awkward exposition in dialogue, as when Marti sketches out her family situation to a stranger: “My parents passed away, and my sister lives in Burlington.” That said, the revelations are more subtle as the plot progresses to an ultimately satisfying conclusion.
A vivid examination of how troubles from the past affect an unfolding future.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427849
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2024
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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