An intriguing, well-researched, and well-told tale of ancient Rome.
A historical novel gives readers a view of ancient Rome from the rare perspective of a good man just trying to do an honest job.
It is the reign of Octavian, and Lucius Nonius Donatus, an engineer, is commissioned to construct a fountain in a very dubious neighborhood, the Subura, “the crotch of Rome.” Nonius is a pro—talented, modest, and conscientious. But this is Rome, so the engineering is the least of his problems. He has to deal with wily politicians, grifters, street gangs, and arrogant aristocrats and arrivistes. This diverse group includes the Lucceia clan, featuring Quintus Lucceis Hirrius, master of the house (and a senator) and enemy of Nonius. Quintus’ wife, Calixta, is the engineer’s erstwhile lover. Enter Amaris, who will in fact be the love of Nonius’ life. When just a child, she was given to the Lucceia household not as an enslaved person, exactly, but certainly as chattel with no will of her own. She is also a Gaul, striking and proud. The story veers between the tribulations of getting the fountain project done and the slow kindling of Nonius’ love for Amaris and the tortuous complications of that affair. Nicastro is an experienced and accomplished writer and often a prose poet in his descriptions of Nonius and Amaris: “If his life was a stem, she was the rose,” and “Trapped there, between the Scylla of oblivion and the Charybdis of inconsequence he was powerless to go on.” This is a Rome falling fast from greatness, though oblivious to the descent. The Republic is dead; Octavian will soon style himself “Augustus,” a god. Sycophancy and cynicism are the orders of the day. The captivating book does, in fact, provide an excellent slice of history. But what is the audience to make of the love between Nonius and Amaris? She wants terribly to love Nonius but is warped by her pride and rage. As for Nonius, readers see him as an older man inspecting that project in the Subura. The fountain is the pride of the neighborhood. The Street of the Labia is now called the Street of the Aqueduct, signaling a job well done.
An intriguing, well-researched, and well-told tale of ancient Rome.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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