An enjoyable if sometimes well-worn take on the self discovery/recovery novel.
A woman whose past is clouded by personal trauma tries to reinvent herself as a home-decluttering guru but quickly discovers the life in need of a deep clean may be her own.
Thirty-seven-year-old Stevie Green loves organizing “for the same reason that [she] loves vacuuming: immediate, tangible results, which [are] so unlike the slow, mysterious shifts of the internal self.” And over the past six months, she’s undergone many of the latter: finally getting sober; returning to her hometown of La Jolla and moving close to her mother; starting a burgeoning organization-and-personal-reinvention service; and gradually beginning to recover from a debilitating car accident. But the trajectory of her life is unceremoniously rocked by the arrival of Bonnie, her free-spirited younger sister—their relationship’s always been marked by an uncrossable rift—who is reeling from a recent breakup, and then a chance run-in with her estranged high school best friend, Chris. At her mother’s prodding, Stevie reluctantly takes Bonnie on as an assistant, and the two become a well-oiled team, helping each of their semidirectionless clients cast off unnecessary possessions “holding [them] back and weighing [them] down.” All the while, artifacts from Stevie’s own past keep snaking back into her life; she quickly learns how frustratingly slowly personal growth occurs and must reckon with the past’s tenacious grip on her life before she can make changes. Huntley has constructed a compelling protagonist who oscillates between obliviousness and excruciating self-awareness, building a complex internal landscape and allowing readers a layered understanding of Stevie's eventual personal evolution. The book is primarily narrated by Stevie, with shorter sections told from the perspectives of other characters. Stevie’s sections are by far the strongest; in general, some of the ancillary characters feel half-baked or cartoonish (Bonnie’s California surfer-girl dialect in particular becomes grating). Though the plot unspools in a somewhat unsurprising way and its emphasis on self-discovery can be heavy-handed, its core is animated by genuine emotional resonance—plus a thoughtful exploration of addiction, anxiety about sexual identity, and the ways family bonds shift in adulthood.
An enjoyable if sometimes well-worn take on the self discovery/recovery novel.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-5962-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
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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