With its luminous depiction of all that has been lost and what remains at risk, there is no better book to read right now.
A gorgeously immersive story of childhood cut short by war.
“My brother, Yuri, swimming in the River Desna”: As Wachman’s breathtaking debut opens, Artem Vovchenko draws the first picture in a sketchbook his father has sent him from the United States for his 12th birthday. It will be followed by other images of a sweet childhood in the small town of Chernihiv, Ukraine—going to school for the first time, riding bikes and taking dares, watching horror movies at a sleepover, visiting their grandfather’s farm in the countryside, where the boys try to earn money for a Nintendo Switch by collecting sunflower seeds. For a while, Artem’s most troubling problem is wondering whether his best friend, Viktor, shares his more-than-friendly feelings—sometimes, it seems he might! But on Feb. 24, 2022, the boys’ world is shattered by the arrival of Russian soldiers, and before long Artem and Yuri are on their own, fighting to survive in the devastated hellscape that used to be their home. About as amazing and impressive as you can imagine, this 25-year-old debut author from Massachusetts has evoked the details of life in Ukraine with utterly convincing clarity, and his depiction of the specific brutality of war will bring you to tears. The key to this achievement is the crystal-clear voice of Artem, a big brother lingering at the far edge of childhood, worshipping his mama and grandpa, bitterly missing his father, learning his country’s history, riding the roller coaster of his crush—then pitched abruptly into a jagged world of violence, grief, shame, responsibility, and hate. He is a narrator to fall in love with, evoking connections to the work of Anthony Marra, Justin Torres, and J.D. Salinger. The structure of the book, unfolding via 100 scenes from Artem’s sketchbook, underlines the essential role of art and storytelling as survival skills for life’s most ordinary and extraordinary challenges. As an epigraph suggests, “War cannot be understood; it must be felt.” Wachman does the essential work of making us feel.
With its luminous depiction of all that has been lost and what remains at risk, there is no better book to read right now.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063418226
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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