A thoroughly entertaining rendition of one woman’s search for belonging.
A young woman inherits an apartment from a total stranger and tries to figure out how she is connected to the person who bequeathed it.
Meena Dave lost her parents in a tragic accident when she was a child. Ever since, she’s refused to get close to others, always keeping people at arm’s length. She lives as a nomad, working as a photojournalist and traveling constantly for work. She’s therefore quite puzzled when a lawyer informs her that she has inherited an apartment from a woman she’s never met. The apartment in the Back Bay area of Boston is part of a building called the Engineer’s House, which was purchased decades earlier by an Indian immigrant. Each of the building’s apartments is occupied by other descendants of Indian immigrants, and Meena wonders if she, as a woman with dark skin but unknown background, might have a familial connection to the woman who left her the apartment. After learning she can neither sell nor sublet the home for six months, Meena decides to move in while she tries to uncover the mysteries of her past. She starts building relationships with the other people in the building and also discovers notes inside the apartment that have apparently been left for her to find. The longer she stays, the more connected she feels to the building’s other residents and to her past. Told from Meena’s perspective, the book has a light feeling, but it examines deeper issues like loneliness, abandonment, and cultural expectations. Through Meena’s interactions with her new neighbors, the author explores what constitutes a family and a home. With fascinating details about photojournalism, communal apartment living, and the experiences of Indian nationals who immigrated to Boston in the early 20th century, the novel illustrates the unconventional ways in which people attach to others in unfamiliar surroundings. Although the narrative is sometimes bogged down by unnecessary details, the supporting characters, with intertwined and nuanced histories, add richness to the absorbing story.
A thoroughly entertaining rendition of one woman’s search for belonging.Pub Date: June 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3907-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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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