A smart, absorbing study of a spiraling, unhealthy relationship.
An intense friendship between two women becomes emotionally dangerous in Merle’s 1980s-set novel.
Tina, a 29-year-old aspiring writer at the tail end of an unsatisfying marriage, meets a new female friend, known as Spike, at a writer’s retreat. From the start, she’s drawn to Spike’s audacity, energy, confidence, and wild stories—so much so that she views Spike as not merely a pal, but also a guide: “While I’m not a superstitious person, she did seem sent. As if the ripples in the lake finally calmed and in the limpid pool I saw the reflection of everything I denied I was or could be.” Their relationship deepens after they both return to New York City, become regular drinking buddies, and confide in each other about their relationships. Spike tells tales that often involve abuse and the threat of violence, and they initially thrill, but soon start to worry Tina; a violent work of fiction that Spike is revising also gives Tina pause. Soon, Tina starts to feel less like Spike’s friend, and more like a monitor of Spike’s changing moods—waiting to react to her, rather than acting on her own desires. She tries to extract herself from the friendship, but she fears it may already be too late. Merle charts the path of Tina’s mounting realization with a sensitive and perceptive portrayal of a writer who finds that Spike is a lot more fun as a lively, past-tense story than she is as a present-tense reality. Some of the male characters in the women’s lives are not as well drawn, but as the broad types they are, they work well enough in the context of the story. The dialogue, on the other hand, is uniformly sharp, sometimes funny, and keeps the story moving briskly along.
A smart, absorbing study of a spiraling, unhealthy relationship.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798896360025
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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