Intriguing and quirky, if sometimes underwhelming, tales.
This collection of short stories explores the bonds between humans and animals.
The tales offered here center on a Polish family and are recounted by Aldek, who, at the opening of the book, is a young boy with conflicting feelings about animals. The volume is divided into four sections. The first, “Poland Stories,” provides a glimpse of the narrator’s younger years growing up under Communism. “Paw, A Zakopane Dog” tells of a cunning family pet who steals a steak from the local cardiologist. Meanwhile, in “Oskar Weasel,” the narrator plans to save a weasel from two boys who pit it against a dog for sport. The book’s second part, “Roxy Stories,” finds Aldek living in America, a husband and father who, in “The Adoption,” surreptitiously acquires a dog called Roxy for the family while his wife is away. The third section, “Marta Stories,” focuses on Aldek’s wife; “Mikimoto Pearls” features the narrator searching for a landmark anniversary gift. The final segment, “Philadelphia Stories,” contains assorted animal-related anecdotes, such as “Sojourner Possum,” in which the unwanted marsupial invades the narrator’s vegetable garden during the Covid-19 pandemic. Roman’s stories are generally lighthearted, with the Polish author displaying a wry wit. When gathering book titles to teach his family about dog ownership, Aldek amusingly includes “Old Yeller…The Incredible Journey, even Stephen King’s Cujo—so they could learn the amazing loyalty and ability of dogs, but also know to stay away from rabid Saint Bernards.” The opening tales demonstrate greater depth, capturing family life intertwined with broader sociopolitical commentary: “The ray of sunshine disappeared in two years as the Party disempowered Solidarity and returned Poland to a Communist gloom.” As the volume progresses, the storylines become increasingly bland and the link to animals more tenuous. In “Mikimoto Pearls,” the author tells readers: “An oyster is definitely an animal….You’ll have to settle for an oyster.” But in “God’s Revelation to Jan the Human,” a laborious story about a contractor with a gambling problem fixing a leaking pipe, Roman concedes: “I am including one human animal in this bestiary.” Despite some humorous moments, this collection veers disappointingly off course as it struggles to hold the audience’s attention.
Intriguing and quirky, if sometimes underwhelming, tales.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8-9857500-0-3
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Chestnut Hill Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2022
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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