Fans of Guncle #1 (now big-screen bound) are most likely to stay on board, so best to start there.
Gay Uncle Patrick—GUP—is back, helping his niece and nephew deal with their father’s remarriage.
As the author humbly notes in his afterword, the first installment of this series was embraced by readers who fell in love with the character of the aging screen star and his relationship with young Maisie and Grant, whom he was caring for in the wake of their mother’s death and their father’s stint in rehab. Now it’s five years later and the children have a new trauma to face—their father’s wedding to a titled Italian woman, held at Lake Como. The first chapter starts with a bang, as we learn that the nuptials at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo are threatened with cancellation, to the seeming delight of the younger contingent, who remain 100% opposed. Readers who love Rowley for his banter, his classic gay/boomer wisdom (“brunch is awesome”; “I believe it was the great philosopher Steve Winwood who said that finer things keep shining through”), and his tender delineation of the bond between a man and his “niblings” will likely be able to forgive the dull, cringey trip through Europe that proceeds in flashback for the next third of the book, as Patrick introduces his charges to Parisian hot chocolate, Sound of Music lore in Austria, gondolas and gelato in Venice. Once back at Lake Como, things pick up, as Patrick throws himself into a rivalry with the children’s prospective new “launt”—lesbian aunt—Palmina. At the emotional center of the novel are two characters at awkward ages: Maisie at 14, with her smart mouth, loyalty to her mom, problems with her period, and new Prada culottes; and Patrick at 49, who has cut his dear younger partner Emory loose in preparation for his imminent dotage.
Fans of Guncle #1 (now big-screen bound) are most likely to stay on board, so best to start there.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780593540459
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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