A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.
A woman is hounded by accusations of witchcraft through 16th-century Denmark in this historically based novella.
“I am a child shaped in beeswax,” is how the narrator of this breathtaking short novel introduces itself. The narrator means this literally—it is a wax child, only “the size of a human forearm.” Its beloved maker, who it misses with a “bottomless, shaft-like longing,” is an impoverished Danish noblewoman named Christenze Kruckow, who lives in the luckless household of Anne Bille. Embittered by an unbelievable series of miscarriages or stillbirths, Anne accuses Christenze of witchcraft, the punishment for which is a gruesome death. Christenze flees to the larger town of Aalborg, taking the wax child with her. In Aalborg, Christenze, who never married, joins a lively society of women who gossip, sing, and repeat the folk lessons they have learned from their mothers as they perform the grueling labor of their lives. The wax child, who is present at many of these gatherings in the guise of a child’s toy, reports both the women’s talk and the feelings that seethe behind it—Christenze’s attraction to the “effervescent” Maren; the claustrophobic resentment of foolish Elisabeth, whose husband, the pastor Klyne, abuses her; the proud independence of the one-eyed widow Dorte; the cunning spirit of Apelone. Yet, in spite of the small protection afforded by her noble birth, the label of “witch” is not so quick to fall away from a woman content to live on her own. Spurred by the witch-hunting mania of King Christian IV and fanned by accusations from the malignant Klyne, Christenze is again accused of witchcraft and is thrown into the dungeons, along with Maren, Dorte, and Apelone, to await trial. Throughout it all, the wax child—who narrates from the distant future, the past, and the brutal present of the novella all at once—spins its own spellbinding tale of loss and longing as the true story of Christenze Kruckow weaves through language that makes what happened to her, and to so many other women like her, pulse with a clarity more real than fact.
A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780811238830
Page Count: 144
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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