An intriguing but slow-paced love story.
A Catalonian man of inauspicious origins struggles to become a successful baker during politically tumultuous times in this early-20th-century epic novel based on a true story.
Martí Cardo is born and raised in Igualada, a city in Catalonia, by a family of modest means; his father, Hector, is a poor, illiterate farmer. Martí suffers from no poverty of ambition, though, and pines to emulate his older brother, Oscar, who owns a prosperous bakery business in Mexico City. After his father dies suddenly, Martí opens a bakery under the lovingly avuncular tutelage of Ceferino, his godfather. Meanwhile, Martí falls in love with Montserrat “Montse” Balaguer, a beautiful local girl, a gifted artist, and the daughter of prominent, affluent businessman Augustin. While she requites Martí’s affections, Augustin rejects their romance on the predictable grounds that the suitor is an illiterate peasant. Martí eventually wins over Augustin, and the young couple marry. But despite this triumph, the pair’s troubles have only begun. In the first third of the 20th century, Spain is immersed in domestic turbulence, and following the end of King Alfonso’s reign, the country teeters on civil war. To make matters worse, Martí’s long-standing rival for Montse’s affections, Felix Castell, the son of Igualada’s mayor, becomes a powerful officer in the army responsible for tracking down Fascists. When Felix’s lust to destroy the baker turns murderous, Martí and Montse have no choice but to flee the country and start over, hopping on a ship destined for Mexico City.
Lytle’s ambitious story is politically astute, offering many rich details. In addition, the author’s command of the historical period is impressive. While this isn’t a principally political novel—it’s a love story first and foremost—the historical context isn’t negligible, and Lytle lucidly explains the complex internecine conflicts in Spain without burdening readers or distracting them from the central narrative line. But the book is hampered by sentimentality. Consider this line describing the day of Martí and Montse’s betrothal: “Sunlight streamed in through the stained-glass windows high above them, reminding everyone of God’s love, transformed in colorful glass. The light seemed to ignite a flame of joy that lit up Montse’s face.” The tale is related by Nuria, the daughter of Martí and Montse, to well-known Spanish reporter Margarida Cardona, now an older woman. Nuria relates an old-fashioned tale, she insists, but also an unabashedly and endearingly romantic one. Unfortunately, the plot moves at an unhurried pace, unworried that readers’ patience will be tested. Yet the novel’s central problem is the writing, which can be maudlin. A romantic novel hinges on the poetry of its depictions of matters of the heart, and this work is sometimes undermined by the canned emotions of its two protagonists. Martí’s letter here is an example: “Dearest Montse, When I see you, I always feel like Heaven is smiling on me. Now that I am home, I never want us to be apart. I do not think I could bear leaving you again. You give me strength and make me happy beyond words. I hope this day and every day of your life I can give you great joy. I love you.”
An intriguing but slow-paced love story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2021
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
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