An ambitious but remote story of a powerful man’s late attempt to find his place in the universe.
An aging billionaire attempts to stave off death in Karp’s play.
Planning ahead for his golden years, American billionaire Broncko helped found the Geriatric Institute, an end-of-life home for the superwealthy situated in the Swiss Alps. Now in his mid-90s, the curmudgeonly Broncko resides in the institute’s penthouse suite under the care of his long-term personal physician, Christie, and his bodyguard, James. He resents the health regimen meant to extend his life, with its many tests and exercise classes, and he spends much of his time thinking about his deceased compatriot Harry, whom he considers to be his “one true friend” despite the fact that Harry, who died by suicide, ran off with Broncko’s first wife. To prolong Broncko’s life and stave off his recurring bouts of “black-dog Depression,” Christie does her best to keep the old man entertained. When he fires his in-house comedian, she brings in Prof. Hersch, an expert in multiple disciplines, to lecture Broncko on the history of the universe. It’s a poignant topic for Broncko, who is estranged from his astronomer son, Broncko Jr. As Broncko reflects on past mistakes, he considers how much he really wants to continue living this life that he has given his fortune to extend. Karp effectively uses his characters’ dialogue to explore the personal and cosmic, casting Broncko’s life in a way that feels large and small at the same time. “It frightened me,” the old man confesses as he tells the professor about stargazing with his son many years earlier. “Hersch, looking up at those billions of endless night Stars. I felt like one of your ‘White Dwarfs,’ Hersch. No energy left at all, I felt ready to explode!” The story’s progress is halting, and not every scene accomplishes all that much; Karp provides readers with plenty of exposition about the institute, while Broncko’s life and personality are only thinly sketched. This is a play with plenty of ideas but not quite enough humanity.
An ambitious but remote story of a powerful man’s late attempt to find his place in the universe.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9798987608142
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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