A readable but somewhat shallow story about friendship and loyalty.
Two young Italian American women grow up under the shadow of organized crime in the 20th century.
It's hard to find fresh ways to write about the American mob in the wake of the cultural juggernaut that was The Sopranos. Krupitsky (who credits the HBO series in her acknowledgments) opts for looking back. She approaches the story through the eyes of two young women who grow up inside—and yet, because of their gender, outside—the family. Set in Brooklyn during the late 1920s through the late 1940s, the novel follows Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo as they grow up in an Italian American bubble. Sofia is impulsive, inquisitive, popular; Antonia, introspective and studious. Other children aren’t allowed to play with them, but this is not a problem, because they have each other. Their families are close, their fathers in the business of “helping people,” they believe. But then Antonia’s father disappears, and the dynamic shifts. Tenuously connected through weekly Sunday dinners, Sofia and Antonia drift apart, grow up, and come together again as their adult options narrow. What can they do besides get married and have children? Can they escape the family—and do they even want to escape? Krupitsky’s novel lacks the depth of Elena Ferrante's work, but the story is fast-paced and readable, and the ebb and flow between Sofia and Antonia as secrets threaten their friendship propel the reader forward. Krupitsky can construct a memorable image: Someone the girls dislike has teeth that “crowd into his mouth like commuters on a train platform.” But the finale feels unlikely, playing out in a way that can’t possibly be as seamless as Krupitsky makes it out to be. In the end, the novel turns out to be a little too facile for its own good.
A readable but somewhat shallow story about friendship and loyalty.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-54199-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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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