A clear-eyed satire that explores the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Conspiracy, corruption, and a worldwide pandemic drive one ordinary man to risk everything to expose unbelievable truths in Ford’s satirical novel.
A global pandemic called Chimapox has put the world on lockdown. Businesses are shuttering their windows, workers are losing their jobs, and people of all ages are dying. Jim Mollett, an ecologist recently returned to the outskirts of London after nearly ten years in Vietnam, spends his days caring for his Uncle Tommy and Auntie Edith; they exist in what’s known as a bubble, a tiny community in which members may only have contact with each other for fear of spreading the virus. Flanked by affable neighbor Alfie and niggling landlady Marjorie, Jim spends his days working from home, taking long walks, and avoiding the Lockdown Patrol volunteers. This monotonous and structured existence is interrupted when Jim meets Lily, a free-spirited, self-proclaimed witch to whom Jim is instantly attracted. Their eyes are opened to a web of conspiracies and lies when Jim stumbles upon an anti-vaccination protest. The protestors assert that the new Chimapox vaccines cause disease and that Sir Albyn Denbald—the billionaire “business tycoon” at the head of Vestral Health—wants to control the population by rendering women infertile. Jim finds himself at the center of a volatile movement when he aligns himself with the anti-vaccination protesters and vows to discover the truth about Denbald, Chimapox, and the so-called “plandemic” (along with various theories about 5G networks, microchips, and lizard people). His once mundane existence is now enlivened by espionage, witches’ covens, evading law enforcement—and, of course, arguing with people on the internet. Ford has crafted a thinly veiled metaphor for the Covid-19 pandemic with levity and self-referential humor. The characters’ experiences with Chimapox are both realistic and exaggerated; the novel offers a comical blend of 2020’s real-life paranoia and Orwell’s 1984 (1949). The narrative is well plotted and evenly paced, and no sentence is wasted; each chapter has its purpose. While none of the characters are particularly likable, they effectively function as mirrors for both liberals and conservatives. Ford’s imaginary pandemic is at once humorous and frustrating, grounded and hyperbolic.
A clear-eyed satire that explores the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781035884490
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Austin Macauley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2025
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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