An engaging thriller with an academic setting that readers wouldn’t want to be caught dead in.
A debut novel proves that college can literally be murder.
Of course, Nowhere Island University isn’t your average institution of higher learning. Nathan Jacobs, Sherman’s protagonist, learns this very quickly. NIU is actually a prep school for mercenaries, drawing students from terrorist and paramilitary groups around the globe. So how did Nate, admittedly adrift when it comes to his life plans, end up here? Nate got recruited at his high school Career Day by the shadowy spy agency UNIX and was sent in undercover to investigate NIU. Joining him is John Marshall, another UNIX plant. Nate fears that he’s in over his head but soon shows that he can hold his own alongside more experienced students. But he’s hamstrung by having a moral compass: “There are people who will hurt the people I love, maybe because of irrational hatred, maybe because they think it will make a point or profit, or maybe because they’re the kind of sicko who enjoys it.” He’s inducted into a secret society comprising seven of the school’s fiercest fighters. While all of the students have to watch their backs, Nate discovers that the biggest obstacle is the curriculum, which produces a high fatality rate. So it becomes a never-ending struggle for Nate and his new friends to outlast the sadistic program set up by the school masters. Sherman has created a crisply paced thriller culled from a series of his online postings over two years. Remarkably, he has smoothly married together these posts into a work that should capably hold readers’ attention. It is a visceral novel, as he recounts in graphic detail the grisly, life-and-death struggles of the NIU students, a majority of whom don’t survive. In his author’s note, Sherman admits to being a video game fan, and this tale feels like one, with a similarly high body count. But characterization is a shortcoming, as, other than Nate, the players aren’t three-dimensional enough for readers to become invested in them. The reasons most of these students willingly inject themselves into this setting aren’t made clear. Still, it’s possible to ride along on the frenetic action and enjoy the violent world that the author has developed.
An engaging thriller with an academic setting that readers wouldn’t want to be caught dead in.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5450-1823-1
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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