An amusing, zigzagging adventure starring an unlikely hero with a plethora of issues big and small.
McKean’s comedic novel follows a divorced father in western Pennsylvania.
Peter Sanguedolce’s ex-wife, Avis, is a tough-minded attorney. When issues come up regarding the custody of their daughter, Jeanette, he does not have a lot of sway. A good-natured slacker, Peter inherited a family business that manufactured clay piping. This business subsequently failed. Peter now tends to spend his days overeating and vaguely considering reentering the business world. When his neighbor Jacob Weiner is put into a nursing home, he develops a friendship with the cantankerous old man. Jacob was the “chairman emeritus of the Oak Grove Music School Woodwinds Department,” and, though skilled with a clarinet, he was not (according to his daughter) the most able parent. Despite Peter’s general lack of direction (at one point he takes up baking), he has some pressing issues: Avis wants to send Jeanette away to boarding school in Connecticut. This does not seem to be the best fit for Jeanette, and Peter is suspicious of both Avis and her new husband, a budding politician named Elliott Fields. Meanwhile, Peter develops a relationship with Fay Halbrunner, the woman who bought Jacob’s former home. Fay insists that she and Peter try to help Jacob reengage with life. A road trip ensues in Peter’s 1988 Cadillac Brougham. It is not the last time in the narrative he will hit the road, journeying into the unknown with good (though misguided) intentions.
The plot features multiple twists and turns: Just as it seems that the situation with Avis is resolved and that the self-assured attorney has no more use for her ex-husband, cracks appear in her relationship with Elliott. When Fay has secured Peter’s interest, she suddenly finds that she has other business to attend to. These developments hold the reader’s interest as Peter eats (and drives) his way through his problems. Many of the motivations of the characters amount to very inconsequential, mundane issues; the nagging concerns over where to send Jeanette to school aren’t particularly funny or insightful. Even as the reader discovers the real reason Avis is so keen to send their daughter away, it does not make up for previous bland conversations on the subject. When an admissions director at a school asks Peter, “What makes you think that we’re the right one for Jeanette?” his response is as dull as the question. By contrast, Elliott, the obvious villain from the start, garners much greater intrigue: What exactly is this guy after? Why is he such a jerk? How will Peter manage to outfox the wily aspiring district attorney? This aspect of the story, along with comical lines, such as when Peter complains about construction workers blasting their radios (“Does each man have his own Rush Limbaugh?”), keeps it in motion, long after the Cadillac Brougham meets its own unhappy demise.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781604893410
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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