A captivating animal tale that explores universal themes.
A wolf comes of age and finds his place in the world.
In this debut novel, a wolf goes from vulnerable cub to independent adult, navigating a landscape where the weather and other animals can be beneficial or dangerous. The book opens with the unnamed narrator as a sheltered young pup, just beginning to meet his family (young sister, White-Ears; Ma and Pa; and older brother, Scruff-Paw) and explore the world outside his den. The narrator and White-Ears learn to hunt, read the messages left by other animals, and be on guard against threats. After Scruff-Paw fights with his parents and leaves to make his own way in the world, the family heads west, looking for more safety and better hunting on the coast. During the journey, the narrator and White-Ears are left alone when their parents face off against an unfamiliar pack of wolves. When it becomes clear that Ma and Pa will not be returning, the two siblings head for the coast. White-Ears is injured, and the narrator takes care of her, stealing food from a wolf he dubs Notch-Tail. After his sister bonds with another wolf they meet, the narrator takes off alone to search for his parents one last time. He faces new dangers, fights to survive, and eventually reconnects and mates with Notch-Tail. The pair’s cubs face tragedies of their own, and the wolf family continues to find moments of joy where it can. Rong does an excellent job of transforming the wolves into dynamic characters, with needs and emotions that are compelling to readers but not overly humanlike, differentiating them with plausible quirks, like the narrator’s love of fishing. The descriptive language is vivid, particularly when it comes to the narrator’s hunting and feeding sessions (“I reached into the belly and pulled out a chunk of meat, and I ate it whole, feeling the tender strands pop in my mouth, mashing against my teeth before sliding down my throat”). The solid story delivers a generally satisfying coming-of-age plot that celebrates the natural world without romanticizing it.
A captivating animal tale that explores universal themes.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77785-850-6
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Teng Rong
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
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
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