A portrait of trauma whose relentless misery dulls its sharper insights.
In Curtis’ novel, a troubled woman spends her life questioning God and the tragic events that have surrounded her.
Rose is a young woman whose entire life is described as a “process of trying to commit suicide.” Inclined toward self-sabotage and dangerous situations, Rose moves through her early life under the weight of abuse, neglect, and spiritual despair. In a mostly objective, slightly detached voice, the author relates one distressing event after another: Rose nearly drowns while her father barely reacts; young boys abuse her physically and sexually; no one helps her with her first menstruation. After her mother abruptly moves the family from Connecticut to Colorado, Rose also encounters a vile stepfather and an older stepbrother who becomes her primary molester. Everything reinforces Rose’s belief that “God certainly did not love her.” As Rose grows older and drifts across the country, from California to Boston and back to Colorado, the novel’s vignettes move from the distressing to the bizarre: Rose shoots a man and escapes consequences; perfectly healthy people die for no reason around her; God speaks to her directly through complete strangers. Even after a divine intervention, Rose remains convinced that she’s been singled out for suffering, an idea that follows her well into adulthood and even after she leaves the country for China, where her crises slowly begin to alter her perspective on faith and life. Curtis’ narration provides readers with a certain distance from Rose and her problems, and the dry, staccato prose injects some much-needed humor: “I hesitate to use the word culture,” she writes about Colorado, “for it has nothing to do with sophistication.” The novel’s stranger episodes can feel like poetic re-creations of disassociation, but the relentless accumulation of suffering becomes punishing. Each incident sounds the same refrain: “Misery defined her life.” Consequently, the novel’s emotional and religious conflicts feel like one-note affairs. Though Rose easily earns sympathy, the novel’s repetitive litany of despair may leave readers emotionally drained.
A portrait of trauma whose relentless misery dulls its sharper insights.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798246386217
Page Count: 290
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2026
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.
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