A masterpiece of Scandinavian and early modernist literature—and with more to come.
The third volume in Undset’s classic tetralogy finds the protagonist’s household riven, and with worse on the way.
Olav Audunssøn, the namesake hero of Undset’s epic, is a psychic mess at the beginning of this volume, the second of whose two parts is meaningfully called “The Wilderness.” A witness to the great transformations of the 13th century, Olav gives the reader plenty of reason to think he should have been a Viking berserker. Instead, he’s doing all he can to be a devout Christian, so when he travels from Norway to England on a trading mission, he goes to church to pray rather than pillage. He is obsessed by his deceased wife, Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, whose life he complicated by murdering her lover, a story that unfolded in the preceding volume. Olav feels little guilt for the killing but endless remorse for Ingunn’s mortal illness, so much so that when a wealthy English lady casts him come-hither vibes, he flees: “Olav was still holding her, but he was staring and listening to something over her head, as he felt his own desire seeping away, not extinguished but flowing far away from this woman. Ingunn was calling to him.” Ensorcelled by Ingunn’s memory, Olav is full of contempt for their son, Eirik Olavssøn, who wants nothing but his love and approval; the fact that Olav calls him a “wayside bastard” suggests there may be some issues with the genealogy, but then Olav, for all his piety, isn’t above fathering a few off-the-books kids out there on the fjord. Eirik and Olav reach something of a détente, though, just in time for a Swedish upstart to come on the scene attempting to stir up a rebellion against the king, affording Olav a welcome chance to kill a few enemies Viking-style—but at terrible cost. Rich in Catholic symbolism and with plenty of family drama and other mayhem, the book is as sturdy and swift-flowing as any work of Hamsun or Laxness.
A masterpiece of Scandinavian and early modernist literature—and with more to come.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5179-1334-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2023
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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