A funny, life-affirming novel about taking back control of one’s life.
The lives of four Canadians intersect at a late-night diner in McMullen’s novel.
Like any good diner, GoHo’s is a gathering place for a certain type of lost soul, the kind of joint where a divorced middle-aged man like Guy can mull over just where his life went wrong over a plate of meatloaf and french fries. “I wasn’t sure if I was melancholy, self-absorbed, dazed, or just generally messed up,” narrates Guy (whose real name is Sean; Guy is his GoHo-specific pseudonym). “I was trying to walk in a straight line toward a new normal, but I couldn’t shake the love I had for my old normal.” Ruling over GoHo’s is the impatient, sarcastic head waitress, Mo, a single mother who resents the rough hand life has dealt her and could do with some male companionship. She competes for attention with local celebrity (and diner regular) Lisa, a musician and the host of a Fashion Channel show, and her boyfriend, former Canadian Football League all-star Al “Smackin” Mackin. (Mackin “resembled Thor,” quips Guy, “and was a god on the field who brought the thunder.”) It appears Lisa and Mackin may be on the outs, and Guy keeps hanging out at GoHo’s in part to see if he can swoop in and steal the affections of the magnetic former beauty queen. As each of the four gets their chance to tell their story—and as those stories begin to intersect—GoHo’s evolves from a spot for meatloaf and people-watching to a crucible of second chances and reinventions. McMullen has fun with his alternating narrators, each of whom has a distinctive cant, especially the jocular Mo, who describes herself as “a certain lovely, loquacious, laugh-inducing waitress—me, your scintillating, wise-cracking servant goddess, the one and only, her Mo-Ness!” The voices take precedence over the plot, which unfolds at a leisurely pace; as in many a genuine diner, the experience is mostly about the hang.
A funny, life-affirming novel about taking back control of one’s life.Pub Date: June 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781039167124
Page Count: 264
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
