A German bestseller when it was first published, Kempowski’s novel is smart, troubling, and witty—but ultimately imperfect.
A German boy comes of age in the midst of World War II.
That Kempowski’s latest novel to appear in English is based on his own boyhood does not come as a huge surprise—for one thing, his hero shares a name with his author. Walter is 9 when the book begins and 15 when the novel—and the war—come to an end. Through Walter’s often oblivious gaze, the reader experiences things from a middle-class German perspective—an often uncomfortable vantage point. Though Walter’s father, who eventually serves as an officer in the army, insists that “I’m conservative to my bones, but that doesn’t make me a Nazi,” he’s loyal to the government, and statements like, “Old Hitler has a good head on his shoulders” are not unusual for him. These ironies are presented without comment or explanation. Kempowski favors short, swift vignettes that proceed rapidly, without much background information to clutter the scenes. Family members appear without introduction, for example. That method gives the book a sense of immediacy and modernity that makes it seem as if the events are still taking place. It also lends a sharp irony to many of the darker moments. When a Danish friend, for example, is released from Gestapo prison—a trumped-up charge to begin with—he comes over to tell the Kempowskis about his experience. “I wouldn’t be able to stand more than three hours in prison…It’s beyond me,” Walter’s mother says. The Danish friend, Sörensen, responds, “What do you think a human being can withstand, Frau Kempowski?” The scene ends there. Still, over the long term—the book approaches 400 pages—these vignettes, which are packed full of parentheticals containing song lyrics, party slogans, and the like, grow somewhat tiresome. One yearns for an honest, straightforward reckoning with the war. And though the book provides a great deal of wisdom and even emotional depth, it doesn’t provide that.
A German bestseller when it was first published, Kempowski’s novel is smart, troubling, and witty—but ultimately imperfect.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781681377209
Page Count: 396
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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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