A curiously compelling debate about inequality and the complexity of choice.
Riki Ōishi still doesn’t know who she is or what she wants to do with her life. Will surrogacy be the answer?
Without skills or a degree from a prestigious university, 29-year-old Riki is finding it hard to succeed in Tokyo, although she was keen to move there from her small town in rural Hokkaido. Working as a temp, lonely and broke, she’s living on boiled eggs and marked-down convenience food. So the idea of becoming an egg donor at a fertility clinic has its financial attractions. But Riki bears a close physical resemblance to Yuko Kusaoke, wife of ballet dancer Motoi. Because the couple can’t conceive, Riki is asked to become their surrogate through artificial insemination using her own eggs, in exchange for 10 million yen. Celebrated Japanese author Kirino’s dryly observed novel carefully considers the peculiarity of surrogacy: Is it just business, or exploitative, a transaction that takes advantage of “poor women selling their uteruses”? Over time, the characters all seem in two minds about the arrangement. Since surrogacy is illegal in Japan, Motoi and Yuko must divorce (on paper) and Motoi must marry Riki for the plan to go ahead. On a brief trip home, Riki ends up sleeping with an old lover. Then, back in Tokyo, she sleeps with another friend, so when she becomes pregnant (with twins), doubts arise over paternity. Yuko and Motoi start to grow apart, not least because Yuko has no interest in children that aren’t related to her. Motoi feels compromised about plans to raise infants if they’re not his. Multiple conversations ensue—sometimes repetitively—about the options and ethics of the situation. Class, morality, obligation, and gender all come up for scrutiny as Kirino moves her figures through further emotional responses once the babies are born. The sifting concludes with Riki, who has matured (and suffered) enough, making a decision for all involved.
A curiously compelling debate about inequality and the complexity of choice.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780307267580
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
