People who say that “Andwhen is a place where nothing ever happens” will certainly have to rethink their position.
In small-town Minnesota, three teenagers face challenges to body and spirit.
As Maltman’s fourth novel opens, the Lutheran residents of Andwhen, Minnesota, are discovering that the ashen crosses Pastor Breen marked on their foreheads at the start of Lent don’t wash off. Some believe this signifies a time of miracles, while 10th grader Basil Thorson takes it as inspiration to begin a fast in hopes that God will heal the physical and emotional wounds of his family. (His father was disabled in the process of saving Basil when he fell into the grain auger; his mother has been in a mental institution for years after having driven a car containing Basil and his little brother into the river.) Both Christian mysticism and Norse myth play a significant role in the unfolding plot; a purported 14th-century saga in verse is parceled out in eight “poetta fragments” between the prose chapters, one of which is narrated by a cow. If this sounds like a lot…it is. And that’s before the remains of a female Viking explorer turn up in a meadow. Six-foot-four, 200-plus pound, special-ed student Basil suffers from severe dyslexia and is taunted as “The Brute,” but fortunately finds respite in the friendship of Lukas Halvorsen and Morgan Breen, son of the sheriff and daughter of the pastor, respectively. “We are the weirdest people in this school,” says Lukas. “A gay, a goth, and a giant,” adds Morgan, who introduces Basil to audiobooks and recorded poetry, inspiring him to memorize and frequently quote from Gerard Manley Hopkins. Meanwhile, it’s March 2020, so another big problem will soon be added to the burden of grief, homophobia, divorcing parents, a high-pressure wrestling coach and more faced by the trio. Where does hope lie? As the cow puts it: “In each dark eye, a galaxy. In our dreaming, a flight to the moon. In our lowing, a memory of a world yet wild with summer. Our kingdom come. Come.” Some readers gladly will, thrilling to the heights and depths of all these impassioned goings-on; let the cynics roll their eyes in the peanut gallery.
People who say that “Andwhen is a place where nothing ever happens” will certainly have to rethink their position.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781641296700
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.
A relationship between young screen actors is magical, fraught, and relentlessly public in Green’s first novel for adults.
“Every movie romance needs an Obstacle, a reason the characters don’t naturally fall into each other.” In the off-screen romance between actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, the obstacle is a moving target. Juniper notices early on that as flirty and forward as Kai is, he seems “closed off to a romantic connection”; that turns out to be the tip of a very problematic iceberg. The two meet in the lobby of a Pittsburgh hotel where they will be spending the evening with Matthew Malone, the megastar playing Andy Warhol in a movie they’re about to begin shooting, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. Kai has been cast as Andy’s intern, Juniper as a journalist who gets in over her head. This is Juniper’s first adult role after a long run as a Nickelodeon child star, and newcomer Kai’s first role of any kind. Green evokes in compelling detail all the phases and aspects of the film project, from the table read to the screening of the rough cut, from the social media fanfare to the public premiere and the press junket, moving back and forth between Juniper’s and Kai’s first-person perspectives. In a meeting with one of the ubiquitous publicists, Kai learns that somehow “the high school stuff” he never talks about—despite their growing inseparability and seemingly profound connection, he hasn’t even brought himself to share it with Juniper—has surfaced. Details emerge slowly, then blow up in the media; the book’s third act focuses on the destructive potential of celebrity culture in a climate that makes Warhol’s milieu look innocent by comparison. After a long break from writing fiction—his last two books were Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)—Green fills this novel with carefully observed details of Hollywood culture and characters, including running jokes about vegan cuisine, media training, and the way Kai’s agent constantly and boorishly consults his young female assistant on points of political correctness. Can he talk about “hot girls”? Can he quote T.S. Eliot? OK to say “dog vomit”?
A classic Green portrait of young love…but here the fault is in our social media.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2026
ISBN: 9780525426073
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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