A lively story with an intricate setting but single-note supporting characters.
The world of a talented L.A. painter is upended when a woman buys his artwork.
Virgilio Santos, a self-described “former street artist and small-time savior,” lives on Sixth Street in downtown L.A. In between life at his apartment with his mother, who practices Santeria, and the time he spends painting at the community center, Virgilio hangs out often at his beloved Sixth Street Bridge. Beatrice Schein, an art curator, sees Virgilio’s paintings and buys them all, offering to propel him to stardom in the art world. Beatrice’s privileged worldview and white-savior tendencies, as well as warnings from his loved ones, make him reluctant, but Virgilio accepts her offer. Meanwhile, a construction project has the neighborhood crisscrossed with tunnels that house various illicit activities, from cockfighting to drug rings. Virgilio’s friends Concha and Sexto are caught up in all of it. Virgilio learns that the “King of the Underworld” is actually Beatrice’s father and that he must avoid romantic involvement with his latest art patron; otherwise, Mr. Schein will tear down his apartment and the Sixth Street Bridge. Everything comes to a head when Virgilio is on his art tour with Beatrice in Paris. Ortega-Medina’s book, with its obvious references to Dante’s Inferno, has a lot going on, but in a good way. Virgilio’s tale engages readers throughout, even though his self-perception—particularly regarding his relationships with those around him—is somewhat skewed. The novel’s tunnel world is also fascinating. The secondary characters, however, often seem to be in service to Virgilio and little else. Virgilio’s mother, Celia, worries about Virgilio; Concha, a trans woman, is in love with Virgilio; Sexto, Virgilio’s “oversexed” friend, lusts after Virgilio, etc., etc. Essentially, Virgilio is a respected, talented, and attractive young man, and everyone wants a piece of him, and he must take on the burden of “saving” these people by being there for them, even though what he wants most is to paint. This portrayal of Virgilio as the sun with the other characters orbiting around him grows tiresome, even as the plot surrounding these characters thickens.
A lively story with an intricate setting but single-note supporting characters.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1838045111
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Cloud Lodge Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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