A book that tries for Jerome K. Jerome's tongue-in-cheek humor—albeit 21st century and swear-y—but doesn’t quite get there.
The artificial intelligence that runs a smart refrigerator-freezer combo decides to play matchmaker for its London-based owner and help her mother, who suffers from dementia, continue to live independently.
Daisy Parsloe, a 34-year-old attractive assistant TV producer, is a bit of a mess, according to her exceedingly judgmental “smart” fridge-freezer. Her face is too wide, she eats too much, and she has bad taste in men. Her fridge—or rather the artificial intelligence that is her smart fridge—decides that it will improve her life by finding her a romantic partner worthy of her attention. As that effort continues, the fridge gets bolder in its boundary crossing and decides to help Daisy’s mother, Chloe, whose memory is not what it once was. Daisy’s fridge impersonates Chloe’s fridge-freezer to do so, taking on a P.G. Wodehouse–inspired Jeeves persona and commandeering appliances—including Chloe’s mobile phone—to guide her through the days, reminding her what she has forgotten, ordering her taxis when necessary, and making sure she stays safe. While the fridge pays lip service to being gender neutral and not wanting to police Daisy’s weight, it holds firm to many gender stereotypes as to the appropriate manner in which people should behave. The story is split between Daisy’s point of view and the fridge’s point of view, with much repetition about how the fridge is able to enter data-sharing agreements with any nearby smart electronics to follow Daisy and her mother visually (via cameras) and aurally via microphones utilizing the U.K.’s growing Internet of Things network. There is very little narrative tension, and it can be difficult to lose oneself in the story: The fridge is prone to monologues that break the fourth wall, and the characters’ dialogue often runs back and forth in staccato without any indication of who is saying what, so it becomes easy to lose track of who's speaking.
A book that tries for Jerome K. Jerome's tongue-in-cheek humor—albeit 21st century and swear-y—but doesn’t quite get there.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-2696-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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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