A novel of ideas that suffers from its own good intentions, manipulating a plot that ought to grow more naturally from them.
The Australian Miller’s fifth novel but first to appear here: a well-intended but heavy-handed, plot-driven story of a 1920s woman trapped by motherhood.
Emily, a young Australian who impetuously marries much older Georges Elder, a half-Scot, half-French visiting engineer, wants more from life than hometown Melbourne can deliver. Her father wishes she’d continue her studies at Cambridge, in England, but Emily, finished with learning after taking her degree, thinks that marrying Georges, who is heading back to Paris, might be the solution. Georges, however, obsessed with submitting the winning design for a projected bridge in Sydney, doesn’t pay poor Emily enough attention once they’re back in Paris. She grows lonely and discontented, and, on a visit to her mother-in-law in Chartres, is ready for a barely credible seduction by the priest in charge of the bishop’s fruit in the crypt of the cathedral. Naturally, she finds herself pregnant and, naturally, instead of living the liberated life, feels sick and ugly. Another creaky plot turn brings her to Tunisia on vacation, where she meets a team of archeologists excavating the nearby ruins of Carthage and the prison cell of Perpetua, an early Christian martyr. Encouraged by the archeologists, Emily begins research Perpetua’s life. Back in Paris, determined to continue, she heads each day to the library, though pregnancy makes study difficult. Georges is not happy about her new preoccupation, but Emily is determined to persevere and is invited by the archeologists to work with them in Tunisia. First, though, she must give birth to a baby girl and confront the seducing priest, causing complications, though not for long: Emily soon makes the decisions necessary to a woman whose life must prove a point.
A novel of ideas that suffers from its own good intentions, manipulating a plot that ought to grow more naturally from them.Pub Date: July 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86935-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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