Both a time capsule, and a ticking bomb, of womanhood repressed in service of societal conformity.
Freshmen at an exclusive Southern women’s college bond, and their swings between obedience and recklessness lead to long-term trauma.
Alumnae of Bellerton College should be able “to hold our own during conversations on both politics and literature, and we would also know how to arrange excellent charcuterie. We might be smarter than our husbands, but at Bellerton we would have learned the necessary tact to never point this out.” It’s 1951, and in the Old Dominion State, young women are expected to graduate with both B.A. and M.R.S. degrees, flaunting engagement rings even before mortarboards are donned. Deena Evangeline Williams knows this before she arrives at her room in South Hall. Despite her background—she was raised by her housecleaner grandmother—Deena hopes to learn her peers’ ways while she keeps a secret that might ruin her chances for a Bellerton-approved future. If this territory has been mined by other writers, it doesn’t matter much as debut novelist Dunham juggles gothic elements including a nasty poetry professor, a drunken misery of a housemother, and glimpses of ghosts in the campus trees. Queen Bee Ada May Delacourt; closeted Winifred (Fred) Scott and her bestie, Sheba Wyatt; Nell Lawton-Peters; and Prissy Nicholson from Texas at first hew so closely to the expectations of Mrs. Tibbert, the wife of the college’s president, that she declares them the Belles of their class. But small things start to go missing from the girls’ rooms and as they snipe at each other, they also discover how good it feels to be bad, brandishing their signature hair ribbons like battle standards and roaming the woods at night, damn the consequences. Deena begins to encounter the apparition of a 19th-century student, Mary Burden, and wonders why only she can see her; even if readers guess, they’ll already be under the spell of this isolated school. As the Belles prepare for their 50th reunion in 2002, their 21st-century lives offer bitter commentary on the real lessons they learned.
Both a time capsule, and a ticking bomb, of womanhood repressed in service of societal conformity.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781668084861
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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