A caustic, mordant depiction of the war in Ukraine with a true underdog as hero.
A courier’s risky mission to steal a package from an oligarch leads him back to his native Ukraine in Stelmach’s novel.
Though his origin story is a remarkable one, involving a rather notorious place in Ukraine, Adam lives in New York, working as something like a courier. His uncle Victor persuades him to deliver a package to Warsaw. First, though, he has to steal the package out of an oligarch’s safe in Switzerland. The job pays $500,000, but Adam has some reservations: He doesn’t work east of Poland or in countries with a dictator or without a McDonald’s. On the other hand, the money will move him closer to financial security and an imagined perfect life. (“To hell and back for an apartment in Florence.”) In Switzerland, he secures the package, but not before his Chernobyl-bred superhuman power becomes apparent: He can grab people and experience their memories. He uses this to his advantage, but a problem arises when a woman, masquerading as his ex, steals the package. He heads to Poland in search of her but, inevitably, ends up in war-torn Ukraine. Masquerading as a German, Adam relentlessly pursues the package, hoping against hope it might help end the brutal conflict. Fans of Stelmach’s earlier novels, particularly The Boy from Reactor 4 (2011), will recognize Adam, the radiation-scarred Ukrainian who is now a death-defying courier. In a compelling story that manages to blend spy and caper scenes with wartime atrocities and even some dark humor, the author is unafraid to confront the more unpleasant side of humanity and its subsequent body count. The action is fast-paced and the story doesn’t linger in one place too long. Stelmach’s impressive ability to get inside the heads of his characters to reveal their secrets, their memories, and their motivations gives unique insight into both the narrative and the war.
A caustic, mordant depiction of the war in Ukraine with a true underdog as hero.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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