A chilling exploration of the costs of human weakness and desire, in a compelling and vividly wrought historical context.
In World War II Malaysia, a woman discovers her pre-war miscalculations have ruined her life.
In twinned story streams beginning in the mid-1940s and 10 years earlier, Chan traces the experience of the Alcantara family: Gordon, Cecily, and their three children, Jujube, Abel, and Jasmin. The opening section is set in Japanese-occupied Malaya (as Malaysia was then called) in 1945, where “teenage boys had begun to disappear.” On his 15th birthday their beloved Abel is among them. Cecily’s first reaction? “For a few minutes before the guilt took hold of her, it was a relief to see her terror realized. It had finally come to pass, and this was all her fault. She had caused this, all of it.” The flashbacks that begin in the next chapter unfold her heart-wrenching story. Through her husband’s position with the British occupation, Cecily comes in contact with a man of two names. On the surface, he is Bingley Chan, a Hong Kong merchant. He begins a friendship with the Alcantaras, coming to their house to visit. Gordon is thrilled by his attention and has no idea that every night after he passes out, Chan, actually General Fujiwara of the Japanese Imperial Army, is working to become his wife’s lover and spymaster, telling her she is helping build “an Asia for Asians.” As this background develops in the flashback sections, the horrors of 1945 unfold in parallel: Abel’s unspeakable torment in the labor camp, the perils of Jujube and even little Jasmin due to the abduction of girls to “comfort stations,” the almost unthinkable miseries of Cecily, who cannot free herself from her sexual obsession with Fujiwara even after he’s abandoned her and her life is in ruins. The ultimate cost of her shortsightedness and self-delusion is excruciating, to the point that finishing the book is like waking up from a nightmare with relief that it didn’t really happen.
A chilling exploration of the costs of human weakness and desire, in a compelling and vividly wrought historical context.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668015148
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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