A brutal tale of survival with a refreshingly kaleidoscopic perspective.
A cataclysmic event forces the island residents of Cedar Key, Florida, to cut off their only access to the wider world in Bobbitt’s novel.
Before everything changed, both lifelong residents and weekenders in Cedar Key loved the island’s lifestyle, which combined laid-back folksiness with the industriousness of the fishing and clamming industry. One day, a mysterious attack destroys a decommissioned power plant on the mainland, and islanders’ lives are transformed in a blinding flash. The first to perish from radiation poisoning are fishermen who are caught out on the ocean, closest to the blast; one of them, Thomas Buck, is saved only due to his poor seamanship. He later makes it to the mainland and rescues his son, but not without violence, as the family fights to keep their home safe from intruders: “Thomas steadied himself, gripped the shotgun firmly, and headed for the man with the axe. As he did, an avalanche of sound roared from the house.” Society deteriorates dramatically within a few days, with raiders and looters taking whatever they can grab, wielding shotguns and sidearms. Soon, the residents decide to blow up a bridge—their only lifeline to the mainland—and hunker down on Cedar Key forever. However, they, and readers, quickly discover that it will take much more than a sunken bridge to keep their home safe. Bobbitt’s novel features quite a bit of gunplay, but these moments are tempered by the detailed backstories that precede them. Character by character, the author moves through the points of view of the island’s small community, establishing pathos for everyone from the mayor to the retired veterans who were simply looking for honest work before the disaster. Bobbitt presents all these folks as if they’re one’s neighbors, which makes it easier to understand their violent acts as self-defense. Overall, this is a propulsive, character-driven post-apocalyptic ride through an otherwise well-trod genre.
A brutal tale of survival with a refreshingly kaleidoscopic perspective.Pub Date: March 1, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Aphroditois Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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