A deliberately messy but potent feat of provocation.
A black satire of bad behavior, assessed from a host of angles.
This novel, a sequel of sorts to Self’s debut short story collection, The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1995), concerns three British couples and a variety of hangers-on as they reckon with cheating, aging, and illness. In most of the chapters, the narrative frame remains the same: A party, a discussion of a woman’s double mastectomy, a collective trip to Italy that leads to a friend’s humiliation, news of another friend’s death—all of it observed glibly by a writer, Will, a clear stand-in for Self. But the details and perspective on the story shift in each chapter, at times to absurd extremes: In one version, all the characters are women (Will becomes Willa), in another, all are men (with heights and penis lengths given in precise detail). One of the longest chapters marks the return of Dr. Zack Busner, a psychiatrist who’s had a recurring role in Self’s work. Here he details the theory of the book’s title, which argues that measuring an affinity group’s moral backbone (or lack thereof) can predict the survival (or collapse) of a friend group, or the whole of British society. This being Self—who throughout his career has taken the bleakest lessons from the likes of J.G. Ballard and Martin Amis—the prognosis isn’t good. He’s skeptical of any effort to sort humanity into categories, lamenting how “time—and in most cases corruption—smooths their personalities into stereotypy, erodes their morals and leaves them as self-indulgent placemen and women of some sort or other.” But his eye for human foibles and their consequences are sharp, especially when he turns his focus on antisemitism, stoked in part by a particularly rapacious AI. For those who can stomach the bitter aftertaste, it’s strong stuff.
A deliberately messy but potent feat of provocation.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780802166296
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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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