A rawly moving debut filled with insights into the legal system and its shortcomings.
A London lawyer’s faith in the legal system is tested after she’s sexually assaulted.
As a criminal defense attorney, Tessa Ensler is often called upon to argue on behalf of people accused of rape. Possessed of an acute knowledge of the law and a brilliant mind (and, as she comes to realize, the default upper hand), Tessa routinely wins acquittals for her clients. She never resorts to dirty tactics such as suggesting the alleged victims “asked for it” by wearing revealing clothes; she simply teases out inconsistencies, contradictions, and other flaws in their accounts, enough to plant a seed of doubt in the jurors’ minds. Her role, as she sees it, is to tell the best version of a defendant’s story; the prosecutor is tasked with doing the same for the plaintiff. Then, it’s up to the judge to decide which narrative is more plausible. To Tessa, the law, for all its imperfections, is truly a force for justice. If one of the clients she’s successfully defended is indeed found guilty, well, the fault lies with the prosecutor for dropping the ball. Based on Miller’s play of the same name, this novel considers the chasm between what Tessa terms “the legal truth” and the actual truth. Can a system built by and for wealthy white men really do right by anyone who doesn’t fit that mold? Tessa’s answer changes after an ill-fated date with a fellow barrister. Back at her apartment, in a violent encounter rendered in horrifyingly vivid detail (that’s a compliment to Miller, not a critique), he forces himself on her, ignoring her protestations and pinning her down. More than two years later, the resulting trial begins—a chance for Tessa to not only have her day in court, but also to assess the effectiveness of the institution she upholds. While the opening chapters can drag (since we know where the plot is headed), the pivotal scene hits like a ton of bricks, evoking in full the physical and emotional horror of sexual assault and its lasting effects on the victim.
A rawly moving debut filled with insights into the legal system and its shortcomings.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250292209
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
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