Not one of this gifted author’s best, though it’s finely rendered with poignant realism.
Prolific, protean O’Nan examines a familiar subject, hard-pressed working-class life in America, through the lens of a Rhode Island murder.
Ashaway, Rhode Island, in 2009 is a typical postindustrial town; the mill that employed most of its residents is closed, leaving people like Carol to scrabble for a living as a nurse’s aide to support her two teenage daughters. One of them, Marie, opens the novel with these words: “When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.” This is not a whodunit but an exploration of why the murder happened; O’Nan tells the story with his characteristic compassion (and artistic boldness) by inhabiting the consciousnesses of four unhappy, conflicted females. Overweight, unpopular Marie is the fearful, helpless observer. Carol wants more for her girls than she has, “but exactly how that will happen she can’t imagine”—so she focuses instead on finding a new boyfriend who’s better than the parade of losers who have earned her eldest daughter Angel’s contempt. Angel can’t see any way out either; her post-graduation future promises little beyond continuing to work in her dead-end after-school job while privileged boyfriend Myles heads for college and “she’ll lose him to some rich girl.” Actually, Myles is already cheating on her with Birdy, the victim-to-be, whose lovestruck perspective is the fourth narrative strand. But she’s no rich girl; Birdy and Angel are more alike than different, frustrated and obsessing about a boy who doesn’t seem worth it. Seen only through others’ eyes, Myles’ role in the ensuing tragedy remains murky. The novel’s main thrust is also unclear; Marie’s closing monologue suggests themes of memory and identity that weren’t particularly evident as the story progressed. However, the book is rich in social detail, including the teenagers’ socially networked world, and warmed by O’Nan’s customary tenderness for ordinary lives. Everyday People was the title of one of his first great novels, in 2001, and depicting everyday people with sensitive acuity remains one of his principal artistic achievements here.
Not one of this gifted author’s best, though it’s finely rendered with poignant realism.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5927-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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
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
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