One life would be plenty.
A young woman working in Paris in the aftermath of World War II is haunted by the consequences of her work as a spy in Lester's sumptuous historical romance.
Australian author Lester moves back and forth through time as she follows orphaned Alix St. Pierre, raised in Los Angeles by wealthy friends of her late French parents, from her post–boarding school, prewar life in Paris to her years in Switzerland working for the Office of Strategic Services under the direction of Allen Dulles and her postwar career as a publicist for up-and-coming fashion designer Christian Dior. Determinedly self-sufficient Alix is haunted by guilt for the role one of her key informants during the war, code-named “La Voce,” may have played in the deaths of her fiance, Bobby, and one of the Italian partisans with whom she worked. Determined to bring La Voce to justice, she forms an unlikely alliance with New York publishing heir Anthony March, described by one of Alix's friends as “very louche and luscious.” The two grow increasingly attached as the search for their dangerous target proceeds. The various plotlines don't mesh seamlessly: While Lester appears to be doing her dutiful best to deal with the atrocities of the war years and the grim experiences of the women and men who must cope with them, her writing comes alive while telling the stories of Dior and those who worked with him, and it's hard not to wish she'd given herself more time with that fizzy subject matter. The budding romance between Alix and Anthony, during which Alix swoons over Anthony's manly form and hidden sensitivity while instructing herself to remain independent, seems tacked on from another, steamier, novel entirely. Readers may find themselves skimming the thoroughly researched but often plodding World War II sections in hopes of returning to Alix's admittedly more frivolous but decidedly more fascinating life in postwar Paris.
One life would be plenty.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-538-70693-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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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