This book is so funny that its poignant, elegiac side kind of sneaks up on you.
Making sense of the vicissitudes and mysteries of middle age with wit, intelligence, and a firm grounding in the spirit of New Orleans.
“I was plagued by remorse, but my remorse seemed inspired by insignificant dumb things—things not really worthy of bona fide remorse. That didn’t make it any less painful or plague-worthy, as I was still riddled with disgrace on a minute-by-minute basis; so I decided to conduct a scientific study to analyze the cause.” The “study” undertaken by Delery Anhalt in the pages of Lemann’s deeply adorable new novel consists of journal entries made between February 2021 and September 2023. Raised in New Orleans, now living in Washington, D.C., with her husband and teenage daughters, Delery is called home when her father has a health crisis—one which had been staved off for quite a while by his marriage to Delery’s best friend, Amelia, whose “fierce and reverent love” for the man gave him a new lease on life. Delery’s beloved father is an intellectual whose version of revelry is not partying at Mardi Gras but studying Ancient Greek and Latin fricatives. Yet he is nonetheless devoted to his city and characters like Curry Carter, a friend who serves duck sandwiches and champagne from his mansion on St. Charles Avenue to the kings and dukes of Carnival as they parade by. As her father did in the 1950s, Delery will face a heartbreaking betrayal, and she will copy his approach of soldiering on. After all, houseguests, in-laws, sarcastic children, the presidential helicopter, and a volunteer job monitoring justice in New Orleans criminal courts must all be dealt with: “Annoyance turns to wrath if you’re not careful. Not that wrath is so bad.” Lemann’s 1985 novel, Lives of the Saints, which focuses on the “wastrel youth” period of life in New Orleans, is being reissued alongside this new book, the better to appreciate the wonderful character of Claude Collier, who reappears here as Delery’s dear old friend and first love.
This book is so funny that its poignant, elegiac side kind of sneaks up on you.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798896230328
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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