Fawkes shines a light on women troublemakers through time in this dazzling feminist tale.
In 1862, Sylvie Swift leaves the Kentucky farm where she was raised with her twin brother, Silas, for Nashville, where her life takes an otherworldly turn.
Following her older sister Marina’s abrupt departure years before and Silas’ decision to join the Confederate army, Sylvie finds herself alone. When an obscure play called Apocrypha mysteriously shows up on her doorstep, she begins translating it from ancient Greek. As the project develops, she begins to feel compelled to track down the anonymous sender of the script. Her instinct takes her to Nashville, which is entirely different from her bucolic home. Against the backdrop of a city struggling to control a syphilis outbreak, feed the poor, and fund the Civil War, Sylvie meets Evangeline Price, the proprietor of a brothel whose clientele includes politicians, military officers, and high-society gentlemen—and who has a curious connection to Marina. Eventually it becomes clear that there’s far more going on at Evangeline’s establishment—and, indeed, in Nashville—than it appears. As Sylvie’s translation takes shape with the help of Evangeline’s multitalented workforce, she begins to make connections between the Ephesus of the play (inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata) and the Nashville underworld she becomes increasingly tangled up in—finding parallels between the Greek women (mortals and gods alike) seeking to undermine the male violence surrounding them and the women of the American South. Based on the true story of Nashville’s attempt to exile its prostitutes during the Civil War, Fawkes’ novel layers found texts—including journal entries, letters, and play scenes—to create an enchanting, immersive narrative interweaving the everyday with the fantastical and Civil War history with Greek mythology. She prompts us to question familiar notions of history and reminds us of the quiet, adaptable power of women through the ages. Sylvie learns the often-dangerous ancient ways of female rebellion but is preoccupied not by the peril of her situation, but by the absence of Marina, whose presence she feels everywhere. A riot of lust, secrets, gods, and mythical creatures make this a thoroughly entertaining novel, rich in detail and lavish prose.
Fawkes shines a light on women troublemakers through time in this dazzling feminist tale.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781419772474
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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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