An engaging read that’s illuminated by skillful worldbuilding.
In Skilbeck’s haunting coming-of-age novel, a teenager comes to grips with the past of her new home in the Northern Irish countryside.
It’s 1972, and 12-year-old Australian Roxy and her family have just started a new life at the Old Manse, a “derelict” 19th-century structure packed with “indistinct memories of other people’s lives.” Before the family purchased it, the previous owners disclosed a frightening story about the property: The former inhabitants—a reverend, his wife, and their three children—had all died in the house in the 19th century. Strange occurrences begin to unsettle the new family, including odd sounds and a mysterious illness. Still, Roxy manages to find a sense of normalcy through her adventures with new teenage friend Margy, including underage drinking and seances with a Ouija board. In these early pages, Skilbeck conjures an atmosphere that’s gloomy and compelling; the tone becomes even darker after the family’s Easter-break trip to Sweden goes awry. After the family discovers the death of an extended family member, they get caught in a blizzard and their vehicle skids on black ice, causing an accident. Roxy must take daily tranquilizers afterward, which affect her studies and other aspects of her life, including a close relationship with an artistic 25-year-old named Elvis. At a few points, the narrative shifts to other time periods, including that of the previous residents—the Rev. Austin Stirlington, his wife Victoria, and their kids in 1860—while building toward a deeper understanding of Roxy’s family’s connection to the house. Skilbeck’s prose has an appealingly sharp tone throughout, especially in its rendering of the young protagonist’s breakthroughs: “Was it better to live in blissful ignorance, enjoying life as you lived it, or to prepare for your death, the inevitable end?” The novel’s historical grounding also stands out, addressing tensions in Northern Ireland, shaped by sectarian identity, as well as the Irish Potato Famine. The result is a multifaceted portrait of the setting with plenty of mystery, wonder, and alluring, gothic unease.
An engaging read that’s illuminated by skillful worldbuilding.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780645194135
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Borderstream Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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