Poorly drawn characters and clichés abound in this familiar story of WWII.
A tale of love, war, and tragedy in 1940s London.
Brown’s debut is touted as being inspired by events that affected her own family, but just about anyone who has seen a movie about World War II could probably have written a similar novel; the story and tropes are all too familiar. Set in the Bethnal Green neighborhood of London, the story follows young Nellie Morris, who works for the mayor’s office. Nellie, who lives with her parents, brother George, and adored little sister Flo, navigates wartime scarcities and endures the frequent air raids with as much grace as she can muster with German bombers screaming overhead. She does have fun hanging out with her childhood friends Babs and Billy, the latter of whom is not-so-secretly in love with her. But when the sirens howl, laughter is forgotten as the whole neighborhood flees to the Underground station to wait out the bombs. The tedium and terror are interrupted when Nellie meets Ray Fleming, a handsome American airman, who tells her tales of his native Michigan, and suddenly her hopes and dreams for the future blossom. But a shocking tragedy upends their romance, and Nellie must confront hard questions of civil and personal responsibility. Brown is best known for playing the telekinetic Eleven on Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things, and her fans are likely to reach with excitement and hopeful generosity for this coming-of-age story. But it is inexpertly written, its major tragic scene confusing and poorly described, and the characters never transcend the paper-thin clichés with which they were constructed (plucky young woman; handsome Yank; asthmatic, nobly suffering friend). Though it seems likely to be a hit, the novel lacks the depth to elicit real emotion.
Poorly drawn characters and clichés abound in this familiar story of WWII.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780063335776
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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
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