Bold, wry, and lyrical musings.
A snarky and brooding collection from a veteran poet.
Akinyemi’s seventh poetry collection presents cynical and sarcastic observations about social and political life. The poems—some in free verse, others rhymed and metered—are sorted into three sections: “Writing People,” “Writing the Writer,” and “Writing the World.” The works are preoccupied with toxic, painful relationships between spouses and families, pastors and religious believers, communities and politicians—with particularly bitter words for what the poet characterizes as Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s “meaningless change.” Poisonous communication styles come to the fore in the multipart titular poem, whose main characters take turns objectifying and hurting one another: Akinyemi rhymes abuse and muse and compares a partner’s sayings to spider poison. The author’s gaze sweeps across TV screens and internet browsers, condemning Instagram and the “venom” of “fake news.” He also conjures cultural environments, including scenes in Nigeria (he remembers “Grandma’s Red Soup” and the texture of garri-ijebu flour) and Great Britain, where racism simmers and an accent is “a spoiler alert…my origin wrapped / in eggshells.” Despite Akinyemi’s sardonic tones, some poems effectively give readers the sense that he’s advocating for sincerity. In one poem, two “imperfect people hunt for perfect partners” and ultimately work toward a resolution: “we laid our imperfections bare on the dinner table, / found closure and gave it another go.” At times, the poems feel self-important and overly dramatic, as when one speaker derides his “favour-hungry friends” for comparing him to writer Wole Soyinka even as he bemoans his own “untapped talent.” Still other poems expressively note that redemption can be found in prayer, “the school of life,” or the act of writing itself. One poem, for instance, asserts that writing is a cleansing act: “a writer is a laundry man— / he will wash your dirty laundry without a fuss.” Just in case, though, the speaker also preempts attacks on his own imperfections: “don’t be that bibliophile who is on the hunt for errors…let the love that beamed through these pages erase my scars.”
Bold, wry, and lyrical musings.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913636-08-1
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Roaring Lion Newcastle Ltd
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2021
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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