A mesmerizing first novel, already a hit in the author's native England, that manages to be many things at once: a smart look at a generation way beyond mere disillusionment, an anti- travelogue to the most exotic of locales, a study in small-group psychology, and a convincing profile in madness. All this, and the dynamics of a fast-paced thriller. The narrator, Richard, adrift in ``backpacker land'' (i.e., Southeast Asia), craves ``something different,'' the ultimate travel spot unspoiled by his own kind. Like most of the travelers he meets, Richard's bored with the usual dissonance of Thailand and Burma. His problems are solved (or just begin) when a crazed suicidal Scotsman, his neighbor in a Bangkok flophouse, leaves him a map to a new Eden, a beach on an uncharted island off-limits to tourists. With a French couple who also crave new thrills, Richard begins his journey ``in country,'' his lingo drawn from the Vietnam War as filtered through TV and movies. A gruelling trek brings the three to ``the Beach,'' a remote strip of perfect nature reached after forging a dense jungle, crossing a marijuana field guarded by armed natives, and then jumping into a 40-foot waterfall. Once there, the three are welcomed by the strange commune of international drifters who have nurtured their compound over six years, surviving on spearfishing, local produce, and lots of pot. Like characters from an adult Lord of the Flies, the 30 or so inhabitants polarize into groups, and chaos descends after a series of ugly incidents. As nutty as Richard seems to grow, the commune's leader is even crazier in her desire to preserve a glorious isolation. The horrors accrue as the moral ambiguity deepens. Garland owes as much to Conrad and Golding as he does to Coppola, Stone, and Warner Brothers cartoons, and it's that wild mix that helps make for a riveting read. (First printing of 150,000; $150,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1997
ISBN: 1-57322-048-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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