An earnest if opaque journey into a country’s troubled past.
A melancholy tribute to an early champion of Ukrainian independence.
This novel by veteran author Maljartschuk alternates between the first-person narration of a present-day Ukrainian scholar and third-person history about Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882-1931), a forceful advocate for Ukrainian statehood. It was a difficult case to make, with Russia claiming the region for itself and many Poles arguing that Ukrainians weren’t ethnically distinct. But Lypynskyi, along with a handful of fellow writers and coffee-house revolutionaries, spearheaded a passionate defense of Ukrainian identity—he wrote the first Ukrainian almanac—even if few rushed to join in. (“The Ukrainian community is a flock of naïve sheep ruled by wolves,” one man observes.) Meanwhile, the narrator develops a passion for Ukrainian literature and becomes a writer herself, discovering Lypynskyi’s story when she uncovers his obituary in an old newspaper. Maljartschuk parallels the woman’s illnesses and failed romances with Lypynskyi’s own poor health, unhappy marriage, and exile in Vienna. “The world had ceased to be a place where one could be sure of oneself,” she observes for both of them. Maljartschuk’s story is of course relevant in 2023, and she is expert at merging history and metaphor (whales and mythical figures are woven into the story); the fragmentary approach echoes Olga Tokarczuk’s sober fictions of eastern Europe. But the story is often sluggish, relating the two protagonists’ experiences in a sometimes stiff translation. Lypynskyi was a complicated figure, a stubborn monarchist who alienated his colleagues and was prone to pomposity. (“Not a single voice stood in my defense when the froth that now grows into moss on the wreckage and spreads befell me.”) That makes him hard to get a fix on. Maljartschuk has chronicled the ferment of the independence movement and its legacy, but the storytelling’s digressiveness and mood sap its force.
An earnest if opaque journey into a country’s troubled past.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781324093220
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
