A touching, evocative depiction of the therapeutic imperative to share and support.
A depressed mother of three flees her family and draws insight and strength from other women in Holly’s debut novel.
On a rainy day in Texas, Jenna Cartwright meets Maggie, whom she describes as “the closest thing I have to a real friend outside of those I left behind in Alabama so many years ago,” for coffee. However, Jenna confesses, she can’t imagine that Maggie “ever struggles with her kids, or her life,” as Jenna does. Only her visits to Bonnie, an elderly local acquaintance who reminds Jenna of her grandmother GiGi, offer some respite. As weeks go by, Jenna grows brusque with her children and increasingly stays in bed much of the time. One day, sitting in the refuge of her parked car in her driveway, Jenna spots her husband, Andrew, returning home from work. She starts the car and drives past him, briefly stopping at Bonnie’s house “to say goodbye.” Back on the road, Jenna fights an impulse to smash into a pole before driving on to Alabama and the home of her best friend, Michelle. Over the following days, Jenna talks to her mother, Michelle, GiGi, and members of GiGi’s walking group about the struggles the women have faced. Jenna returns home with renewed spirit and an enriching new focus in her life. The author effectively captures the complexity of Jenna’s depression through her first-person narration. Jenna seems self-involved and even unlikable at times yet also strikingly articulate about her mental state: “I am numb to the sight before me. Numb to the sounds. Numb to the feelings of anger, frustration, and guilt that I know are there, somewhere beneath the surface.” While the men and children in the narrative remain somewhat shadowy, the range of women’s stories presented here dramatically showcases how despair and loneliness can be relieved through connection with others.
A touching, evocative depiction of the therapeutic imperative to share and support.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9798987966204
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Three Sparrows Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
