A riveting and intelligent novel with a powerful message.
In Samuels’ historical novel set in the early 20th century, an ailing Italian artist moves to New York City to become a counterfeiter.
In 1905, Mimi Inglese is a promising young painter who could become the first woman ever to be accepted into the Palermo Academy of Fine Arts. However, when she contracts tuberculosis, a then-incurable disease, it makes painting all but impossible, as exposure to paint is harmful to her lungs. To make matters worse, her family’s businesses are faltering, making money scarce, and although her father, Antonino, is a nobleman, the power of the aristocracy is in steep decline. However, her enterprising uncle, Vito Cascioferro, notices her extraordinary talent and invites the whole family to relocate to New York under various pretenses; the real reason is that he wants Mimi to work as an artist for his money counterfeiting operation. Vito sees her as “his little Michelangelo,” and soon after she arrives, he puts her to work; in this role, she finds the possibility of a purposeful and creative renewal after her diagnosis—a compelling interpretation that’s characteristic of Samuels’ thoughtful novel. Unfortunately, Mimi is drawn further into the world of New York’s criminal underground; as a result, her father ends up in prison, leaving her in crisis. Over the course of this novel, the author vividly illustrates the sociopolitical distance that separates Palermo and New York; the former is effectively depicted as a stage of vanishing traditions and cultural mores, while the latter is shown to be a place of both unlimited opportunity and moral squalor. Mimi is a memorable protagonist; although her disease is all but a death sentence, she’s still willing to take extraordinary risks to take full advantage of whatever time she has left. Samuels’ prose is straightforward and unadorned but impressively precise, and the tale she unspools offers remarkably nuanced ethical complexity.
A riveting and intelligent novel with a powerful message.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781960573445
Page Count: 381
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2025
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.
