A standout Southern family mystery filled with lush settings, dazzling characters, and chilling surprises.
An unexpected death compels a young woman to revisit the dark events of her childhood in Griffith’s eerie family drama.
For 18 years, August Caine has been living in Paris under a different name and trying not to dwell on her past, but an early-morning phone call from Savannah, Georgia, leaves her feeling like the whole world has been turned upside down. August had believed that her beloved aunt Helen was already dead, but the voice from across the ocean delivers a shocking revelation: “Your aunt Helen didn’t die fifteen years ago. She died fifteen minutes ago.” Realizing that her life in Europe with her mentally ill mother has been built on lies, August returns to the mossy cobblestones of Savannah to attend Helen’s funeral and find some answers. When August was a child, her father was murdered at their home in New York City, leaving August’s French mother so distraught that she became mute and agoraphobic. It was then that the boisterous Helen, with her Southern accent so thick it almost sounded fake, stepped in. Helen brought the young August south to Savannah and into a world of wild parties, spooky history, and charming eccentrics. For the first time, August began to feel herself opening up to the world, and she even grew close to the shy neighbor boy, Tommy. But August’s mother whisked her away to Europe, telling her Helen was dead and that the two of them needed to hide for their safety. Returning to Savannah to find Tommy still living next door and Helen’s house largely untouched, August only has questions about why her mother would have lied, why Helen didn’t come after her, and what events leading to her father’s death could have created the need for such secrecy and strife among his survivors.
Griffith’s moody and surprising opening scene will immediately draw readers into August’s unusual and engrossing story. Writing from August’s first-person perspective, the author wraps every description in poignant and elegant prose: “Time twisted and fused into the hum of white engine noise and the murmur of soft voices,” she writes, turning even a simple nap on an airplane into something poetic. The outlandish Helen oozes Southern charm in a way that feels wonderfully idiosyncratic rather than cliched—she grills steaks in T-shirts at formal parties, drives an old hearse, and serves up plenty of genuine wisdom along with her biscuits and gravy. It’s impossible to not want more of her on every page. Griffith cannily keeps the more distressing elements of murder and mental illness lurking around the edges of Helen’s fabulous world to create magnificent tension. Fans of more fast-paced thrillers might grow frustrated with the very slow burn of the mystery at the novel’s center, but readers who lock into the narrative’s sauntering pace will savor every spooky encounter and tiny clue as they inexorably lead to a satisfyingly operatic conclusion.
A standout Southern family mystery filled with lush settings, dazzling characters, and chilling surprises.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.
A diverting midlife story plucks at the secrets good people carry to the grave.
As a reader, Artie Dam—the protagonist of Strout’s 11th book—encounters Olive Kitteridge, “a crotchety old woman from Maine” and Strout’s most celebrated fictional character. Artie picked up the Pulitzer-anointed book centered on Olive after his wife, Evie, loved it, “oh, years ago now.” Strout is having a bit of fun—that “oh” is a trademark—even though she marbles her latest novel with marital infidelity, political anxiety, and suicide. Indeed, it is the fact that Olive’s father died by suicide that Artie, 57 and gaining a paunch, recalls now in his own dismalness. As the story begins, he is pondering the most discreet way to die, despite having been Massachusetts’ Teacher of the Year five years earlier. Artie seems the inverse of irascible Olive: beloved by his students; by his grown son, Rob; and by the English teacher, Anne, who quietly pines for him. But like Olive, Artie has distressing impulses—he steals a comb, then some expensive shirts. Much of the text bobs along on Artie’s stocktaking memories, chunked out in short, occasionally abrupt paragraphs. Strout’s storytelling is thinning a bit, like middle-aged hair. Then, midbook, she clobbers Artie with a brutal existential shock. In its wake, Strout surfs the nature of loneliness, corrosive secrets, and the convulsions of the 2024 presidential election. Hers is an unremittingly Blue State book, although Artie has one friend who, unbeknownst to him, supported Donald Trump. On the day after the election, Artie somberly concludes that his “country was committing suicide.” This is the first novel in which Strout entirely vacates Maine for another setting. But she sticks with Artie and, on the final pages, delivers him a satisfying finale.
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798217154746
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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