Brilliantly observed first novel about the fascination that brings Americans and Japanese together—and the xenophobia that drives them apart. Toshi, from the majestic northern island of Hokkaido, was nine when his soon-to-be-separated mother took him to see Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. From then on, he was entranced by foreigners—so open and free compared to his own repressed, unhappy family and nation. Brown exuberantly describes Toshi's Candidelike progress in hyperactive, modern-day Tokyo—where pet dogs can be rented (an hour a day per week), the Minister of Agriculture commits ritual suicide on TV, and blimps circle overhead, advertising for a bride for the Crown Prince. When he reaches 23, Toshi has become a boy- toy, seduced by American girls and adored by his best friend, gay advertising executive Paul; and his job as staff artist for a popular comic book, Chocolate Girl, allows him to keep life at a surreal distance. His passivity, however, is increasingly challenged after an affair with his kinky English teacher, Jane, turns scary and violent, his father drops dead coming to visit him, and an earthquake devastates Hokkaido. Against a backdrop of Japan turning furiously anti-American under the specter of US imports, these shocks refocus Toshi on the meaning of his parents' separation. As his father's noodle shop is bulldozed, Toshi's mother reveals that she's actually Korean, kidnapped during the war and gang-raped for weeks by Japanese soldiers and factory workers. Toshi's father was a soldier who came to rape her, then stayed to rescue and marry her, even though she could not love him. After so much surreal comedy, this reversal sweeps through the novel like a tsunami, illuminating the war guilt that lies under Japan's frantic embrace of smiley-face consumerism. In a knowingly sentimental close, Toshi finds love with the right American. And Brown, having handled tragedy, satire, and fine descriptions of rural Japan, doesn't flinch from his final hurdle- -depicting happiness. An impressive debut. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-52671-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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
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
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