Engrossing and carefully penned, with a formidable female protagonist.
The daughter of a California winemaker fights for her father’s approval in Williams’ novel.
It is May, 1960. Forty-year-old Sofia Russo is swirling a glass of Pinot Noir poured from the first bottle from her second harvest. On her desk sits a blank sheet of paper, waiting for her to write words of tribute to her father, Giovanni Russo, to be spoken at the opening ceremony of Russo Vineyards’ first tasting room. The festivities will also serve as the official handover of the vineyard from father to son, from Giovanni to Sofia’s twin brother Alonso (Al) Russo—but it is Sofia who has always dreamed of being the next Russo vintner, whose soul is infused with the smells and labor of the vineyard. Al is a graphic artist, with little interest in winemaking, but he is resigned to accepting responsibility for preserving the family heritage. From the time she was a toddler, Sofia would follow her father and grandfather into the fields, spending every possible moment with her Papa. All that changed at the twins’ 10th birthday party, the day that Giovanni made clear that Al would inherit the vineyard (“as fathers, we are blessed to have sons to carry on the family name”); her relationship with her father has been fractured ever since. After renting a patch of land from friend and neighboring winemaker Mateo Parisi, Sofia has just produced her own outstanding vintage. Williams’ narrative is a vibrant tale of complex filial relationships. Of equal weight is the vivid presentation of the struggles of Napa Valley vintners during Prohibition and the Great Depression—some of the novel’s most compelling and poignant sections are found in these historical chapters. Additionally, the story serves as a primer on the extraordinarily intricate day-by-day decisions involved in producing a fine vintage, with Sofia scrupulously following her beloved grandfather’s inspiration and tutelage. The technical information can become a bit mind-numbing for the average wine consumer, but connoisseurs will enjoy having their attention to vintage subtleties validated.
Engrossing and carefully penned, with a formidable female protagonist.Pub Date: July 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781989144282
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Rippling Effects
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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