A pair of resilient heroes memorably explores creativity across the ages in this vibrant tale.
Two women’s artistic ambitions converge across continents and centuries in this novel.
In present-day Philadelphia, Ellie Waldon has not been able to pull herself out of a slump after her husband’s death from cancer. The discovery that her boss has been passing off her work as his own is the last straw, and she quits her job. But before she storms out, her work as a brand manager introduces her to the oeuvre of pioneering 19th-century artist Suzanne Valadon. The narrative then pivots to Suzanne’s tumultuous life in Paris. Raised by an alcoholic single mother, Suzanne is expelled from convent school at 11 years old and hurtles between various jobs, always dreaming of becoming an artist. Molnar’s book proceeds to alternate between Ellie’s and Suzanne’s storylines. Ellie learns that most museums display only 2% to 4% of their art at a given time. With Suzanne as her inspiration, Ellie decides to found the Museum of Unseen Art to “display art that nobody sees because it’s stashed away in basements in musty drawers.” Ellie’s efforts to change her life are challenged by her older sister’s skepticism and the specter of the home she lived in with her husband, which she was forced to sell. In Paris, Suzanne eventually becomes an artist’s model, which gives her the opportunity to study painters and sculptors at work. She begins to understand “form, the way it’s born of light,” and uses her earnings to buy art supplies. Readers follow Suzanne’s encounters with famous artists of the time, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, and Degas, as she grasps at financial stability, creative satisfaction, and respectability. Fans of Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (2021) will find much to enjoy in this meticulously researched novel’s braided narratives. Suzanne’s storyline is particularly enthralling, with its glamorous locations and references to historical figures and events. Ellie’s story suffers slightly by comparison, not only because Philadelphia is no Paris, but because Ellie’s plot is somewhat overstuffed with dialogue, unnecessary plot twists, and too many characters. Although Molnar has a gift for quick character studies (at one point, she describes Ellie’s unctuous former boss as looking “like a meerkat on guard duty”), the book’s modern-day sections would have benefited from a slower pace and deeper character development.
A pair of resilient heroes memorably explores creativity across the ages in this vibrant tale.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781940627656
Page Count: 402
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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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