A bleak yet compassionate and life-affirming tale about how human connection is critical to survival.
Vlautin’s latest reminds us you can build a family anywhere, even among people who are barely hanging on.
In his previous books, including The Horse (2024) and The Night Always Comes (2021), Vlautin gives us portraits of people just getting by, defined by their simple ability to take a beating and endure. His latest novel follows that same path with Eddie Wilkens, a 40-something house painter in Portland, Oregon, whose affection for a battered Pontiac LeMans reflects his outlook on people. “No, I like it the way it is,” he says when he buys it. “I’m going to keep the dents, too. I like dents.” Eddie’s neighbor, Russell, an 8-year-old boy whose family is unraveling, has dents of his own: a bullying older brother, a distracted mother, and a beloved grandmother slipping into dementia. Drawn to Eddie’s kindness, Russell forms an unlikely friendship with him, one that deepens despite the pressures surrounding them. Vlautin is very good at revealing the despair that lurks behind ordinary routines, and the way small acts of generosity can briefly hold it at bay. His depiction of Portland’s working class is unsparing. A shadow looms in Russell’s older brother, Curtis, whose anger over an absent father, a pregnant girlfriend who rejects him, a collapsing home life, and his own fear of the future turns to violence. The story builds toward a moment of profound sadness, but isn’t without hope. At the heart of it all is Eddie himself. Why does he tolerate so much? Why does he forgive those who disappoint him—his unreliable employee, Houston; his estranged addict wife, Marlene; even Russell, whose mistakes nearly cost Eddie everything? The answer, revealed late, lies in a private sorrow that has shaped Eddie’s capacity for patience. His aunt Frances captures the truth of Eddie’s life best: “Having someone need you so you don’t give up. That’s the luck.” Eddie may be the one others rely on, but it’s clear he needs them just as much.
A bleak yet compassionate and life-affirming tale about how human connection is critical to survival.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063346635
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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