With spellbinding twists and turns, this is a political novel and very much a feminist one.
As mythological women like Circe and Ariadne find their ways onto the bookshelves, here comes a reimagining of Kaikeyi, an interesting antihero.
She was one of the most despised queens of Indian mythology, pitting herself against the gods in the epic poem the Ramayana. A pivotal character, Kaikeyi demands that Rama be sent into exile to delay his ascent to the throne. Patel recasts the Ramayana as a power struggle between women who want to participate in politics and public service and men who would rather they stay home, obedient and subservient. Patel begins her novel with the wrenching moment when young Kaikeyi, only daughter to the king of Kekaya, wakes up to find her mother has been banished with no explanation. In her absence, Kaikeyi decides to develop herself as a warrior. We feel her pain when her twin brother, Yudhajit, tells her she's more a brother than a sister to him: “Don’t take offense. It’s a compliment. Who wants to be a woman?” Soon it's time for her to marry, and her father, who rarely speaks to her, demands she wed the childless Dasharath, king of Kosala, who lives far away in the city of Ayodhya. She agrees to take her place beside Dasharath’s two other wives if he promises that it will be her son who will ascend to the throne. As she comes of age, Kaikeyi learns in the palace scrolls that she has magical powers of connecting to others in a Binding Plane. There, she uses invisible strings to deepen her bonds with her husband. Then, through an intervention by the gods, the three queens give birth to four sons, Kaikeyi’s own being Bharata. She develops close relationships with each boy, including the true heir to the throne, the great Rama, who calls her ma. The young prince is immature, confused by his own divine powers and the conservative stewardship of a holy man. Kaikeyi's desire to teach him the consequences of youth and patriarchy leads to a showdown between them. Patel’s Kaikeyi is not a spiteful woman who wants to place her son Bharata on the throne for her own power. Instead, she is afraid of the growing influence of godmen in her kingdom. She is a revolutionary who attempts to be an equalizing figure, trying to find a balance for her citizens in a patriarchal kingdom.
With spellbinding twists and turns, this is a political novel and very much a feminist one.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-759-55733-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Redhook/Orbit
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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