Artful and moving tales; a treasure trove for fiction fans.
A short story collection offers 11 vignettes about love and loss.
The unifying theme in Sgambati’s tales, many of them previously published in journals, is the effect of memory on the present. In “Forgiveness,” Lena’s health and mental faculties are failing in her advanced age, and she relies on her son, Charlie, to take care of her. She contemplates how she and her now dead husband treated Charlie, especially their meanness about his gay sexuality, and she seems amazed and thankful he’s still willing to take care of her. In “Oxford Avenue Station,” Colin is still tortured about whether his wife committed suicide or simply slipped and fell in front of a train on the El and is comforted by a stranger’s beautiful lie. In “Lila’s Cinema,” a woman in a nursing facility is surprised to realize the impact she’s had on her granddaughter Olive, through her love of movies, and how she has provided joy to her fellow residents by curating screenings. In “What Took You So Long,” a man has an epiphany about his happiness while exploring some family history in a small town after his divorce. The heartfelt and finely realized stories are surprising in their twists and turns and provide a panoply of human relationships with many LGBTQ characters. The author explores the personal and physical hell that gender reassignment recipients often endure through the eyes of Emma, a bed-and-breakfast owner who caters to patients of a local plastic surgeon. It’s an effective choice—Emma has experienced abuse of her own and empathizes with the struggle of young Avi, seeking to become whom he has always been. Sgambati’s characters are complex and tragic but also beautiful. And his language is precise and evocative. In “Grave Companions,” he puts readers in the setting with sensory details: “The diner smelled of damp raincoats, drenched umbrellas, coffee and bacon, hot grease from the grill, and of the hot layers of paint that bubbled and peeled away from old radiators like crumbling memories.”
Artful and moving tales; a treasure trove for fiction fans.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947917-35-4
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Fomite
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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