Like Henry James, Smith clearly believes that relations stop nowhere; unlike James, he seems determined to trace every...
Seventy-eight more slices of low-key comedy, originally serialized in the Daily Telegraph, concerning the denizens of Pimlico’s Corduroy Mansions and their lovers, friends and unavoidable relatives.
The outlook isn’t good for wine merchant William French and his caterer friend Marcia, who keeps coming out with too many nitwit remarks for him to take seriously, or for his downstairs neighbor Caroline and her fellow art student James, a sensitive, sympathetic mysophobe who’s not into physical expressions of attachment. But literary agent Barbara Ragg’s new romance with Hugh Macpherson defangs her long-standing feud with her partner Rupert Porter, exacerbated now by a new problem: the agency’s mild, delusional client Errol Greatorex, who’s mistakenly been encouraged to serve as amanuensis for the Abominable Snowman’s autobiography. And psychotherapist Berthea Snark, still gathering material for her tell-all biography of her son Oedipus, the most loathsome Liberal Democrat in Parliament, never seems to have a nice day, especially now that her brother, clueless mystic Terence Moongrove, has fallen in with a pair of sharpies determined to fleece him. But Caroline’s herbalist flatmate Dee has had a notable idea that may just take off—marketing gingko bilboa as a remedy for failing sudoku fans—and William’s faithful Pimlico terrier, Freddie de la Hay, vaults to a leading role when he’s recruited by Sebastian Duck of MI6 to spy on neighborhood Russian blackmailer Anatoly Podgornin. As in his series debut (Corduroy Mansions, 2009), Smith places exactly the same emphasis on the cloak-and-dagger histrionics of espionage; the pursuit of the yeti through Fortnum & Mason; and the question of who stood whom up for dinner, Caroline or James. The results will charm fans who thought 44 Scotland Street (2005) and its sequels should have been set in London.
Like Henry James, Smith clearly believes that relations stop nowhere; unlike James, he seems determined to trace every single one of them to its vanishing point.Pub Date: June 21, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-37973-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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