A leaden plot laced with sugary prose.
A young boy struggles to weather his own family tragedies while attempting to save his best friend from an abusive father in Elliott’s novel.
In 1968, Francis Paulson is a 14-year-old boy in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a mission. Izzy, his best friend since the fifth grade—a rambunctiously ungovernable boy—has been terrorized by an abusive father since the tragic death of his brother, Jack, an event that transformed Izzy’s father into a “big fat gambling drunken jackass.” Francis schemes to raise enough funds to finance an adventurous river trip for them in a fit of adolescent wanderlust of the kind imagined by Mark Twain. However, Francis is beleaguered by troubles of his own, hardships so monumental they challenge his very faith: Francis’ beloved grandmother Rose dies of cancer, and his sister Shannon is so badly burned in a fire that she is given up for adoption to a family more capable of caring for her. As a result of the emotional stress, his other sister, Mandy (Shannon’s twin), becomes dangerously obsessed with fire, a condition that cries out for psychological help. When Francis’ newest sister Cynthia arrives stillborn, and Father Joseph explains she is permanently lost in the “limbo” of purgatory, the boy’s Christian faith is profoundly unsettled. Elliott has a finely tuned ear for the melodramas of adolescent life—Francis’ innocent romance with Susan Flannagan, a pretty girl loathed by Izzy, produces a maelstrom of relatable intramural squabbles. Unfortunately, the Job-like travails of the protagonist are buried in treacly sentiment and the author’s indefatigable efforts to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. (Francis’ family owns a failing candy factory, and the novel concludes with recipes for treats like Frank’s hot-lava butter almond toffee.) Sermons like these add a didactic banality to the mix: “They are not lost who find healing and peace by searching for truth, sometimes questioning their faith, and also occasionally indulging in the food of the gods: fine confections.” One wishes the author had lent his impressive talents to a story of rebellious teen adventure rather than this melodramatic morality tale.
A leaden plot laced with sugary prose.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781643436159
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beavers Pond Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 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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