A sequel for committed Irving fans only.
After 40 years, Irving returns to the setting of The Cider House Rules (1985) with another sprawling epic, this one keyed to the adoption of a 4-year Jewish girl amid rampant antisemitism.
Born in Vienna in 1905, Esther Nacht became parentless after her father died from pneumonia during their trans-Atlantic voyage to Portland, Maine, and her mother was mysteriously bludgeoned to death after their arrival. Smart and strong-willed but painfully naive, Esther lives at the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, before she’s taken in by the Winslows, a philanthropic, non-Jewish, eccentrically nonbelieving New Hampshire couple—the only people open to adopting a Jewish child. They do their best to help her learn “how to be a Jew.” In return, she will do anything for them, including having a baby for their childbirth-fearing youngest daughter, Honor, after becoming her nanny. Obsessed with Jewish history, Esther moves back to Europe and eventually to Israel. The eras-spanning novel becomes mostly about her birth child, Jimmy Winslow, a film buff and future novelist who goes to Germany, where he falls in with a female tutor who conducts sessions in his bedroom; a lesbian who “wants to try it with a guy”; and various candidates Honor urges him to “knock up” to avoid the Vietnam draft. But Esther continues influencing family matters from afar through various world conflicts. This long churn of a novel is stuffed with the usual cutesy Irvingisms, including digressions about penises and circumcision and an uncomfortable consideration of young Esther’s bare chest, on which she wants to tattoo a long quote from Jane Eyre. The book can be amusing and its underlying themes of identity and belonging, survival and personal freedom sometimes resonate. But Irving’s treatment of antisemitism comes awfully close to being another stunt.
A sequel for committed Irving fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781501189449
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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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