An ambitious novel hampered by its convoluted structure.
In Chawla’s multigenerational family saga, a girl born to a Muslim mother and a Hindu father reflects on the turmoil of her home city of Ayodhya, India.
Saanvi Trivedi is born on December 6th, 1992, the same day the Babri Masjid, an important 16th-century mosque, is demolished by Hindu extremists. In place of the mosque, the Hindus intend to build a temple to the god Rama. Because she was born to a Muslim mother, Yasmin Khan, and a Hindu father, Ramesh Trivedi, her birth bucks the ages of conflict that characterize Ayodhya. Her father, an academic who eventually pivots to politics, met and fell in love with her mother, a poet, in Lucknow, India; the two eloped in a clandestine marriage in a small Hindu temple. Ramesh and Yasmin are both the children of politicians and activists on opposite sides of the Babri Masjid / Ram temple debate; Yasmin’s father is a Muslim organizer who is galvanized into action after the killing of his son by a Hindu mob, while Ramesh’s father helped spearhead the movement to build the Ram temple. Yasmin learns that her own mother converted to Islam and was disowned by her family for marrying a Muslim man. As Saanvi uncovers family histories, her relationship with her parents is tested when her father becomes involved in the Hindu Party, against the wishes of both Saanvi and her mother. In these interwoven family narratives, Chawla establishes a very rich sense of place in Ayodhya. The author tackles grief and silence elegantly; the most memorable passages are about Yasmin and her mother coming to terms with the now-empty room of her late brother. But as a whole, the novel is hampered by its nonlinear, often repetitive storytelling; the same event—Saanvi’s birth—gets replayed over and over again, while Saanvi as a character remains opaque. (“My heart was pungent with a very complex mix of emotions,” she muses, rather vaguely.) The novel is about turmoil, but it offers little insight into the person underneath the murky tidepool of conflicting allegiances.
An ambitious novel hampered by its convoluted structure.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781965784280
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pierian Springs Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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