A scalding corrective to the romantic Western view of French Polynesia written with authority, urgency, and compassion.
Prizewinning Tahitian novelist Peu exposes the human toll of colonialism and poverty in this polar opposite of a picture postcard.
“Every story begins with a family story. Every family has its people bound by blood.” Nine-year-old Pina, living in a shack on the outskirts of Papeete, the eighth of nine children, has her mean, worn-out mother and Auguste, her violent, alcoholic father. When he falls into a coma after a drunken-driving accident, Pina goes to live with relatives in the countryside. But her relief from abuse is short-lived. Against all expectation, Auguste survives, now convinced he’s on a mission from God to cleanse his family and Tahiti itself of immorality. Told in symphonic chapters from varying points of view, the novel follows the family and community through violent events and political unrest, culminating in a rapid-fire series of shocking crimes. Peu paints a blunt, unsparing picture of island life: Young girls are drugged and assaulted at Epstein-esque orgies; gay men are beaten in homophobic hate crimes; poverty, alcoholism, and abuse are rampant. Pina’s sister Hannah fled to Paris yet can’t escape the legacy of colonialism: “Vaita, the first prophet, the visionary, had foretold: in one or two or three centuries the earth will be despoiled, the oceans emptied out, desecrated forever. And their children tormented and lost for having forgotten the very name of the moon that saw their birth.” Colonialism, one character says, “is limited to no era, to no age. It’s simply there. It’s simply, always been there. It’s changed a bit over time, but fundamentally it’s all the same. The soldiers are gone, replaced by Golden Boys straight out of France’s fanciest business school.” And the burden is borne by people like Pina, “a tender sacrifice on the altar of squalor.”
A scalding corrective to the romantic Western view of French Polynesia written with authority, urgency, and compassion.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63206-155-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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