A promising first collection of six stories, two novella- length, that deal with early middle-age and midlife crisis, mostly from a female perspective. The shorter offerings here are more sharply rendered than the novellas. In ``Buddy,'' Charlie Whitman, a photographer, uses the excuse of an abusive father and an unhappy childhood to avoid commitment to Claudine, his French girlfriend. When Claudine is called away to France, Charlie trains her dog Buddy, changing the animal so much—and revealing so much of himself and his need for control—that the couple's relationship is doomed upon her return. ``The Comfortable Apartment'' places a battered wife in a no-win situation: she can stay on with her abusive husband or depend on her sister, Josie, who is so devoted to spontaneous mobility that she offers assistance only to leave for South Africa. Of the novellas, the title story, a meandering affair, follows Lucy Langworthy, 30, to the Florida Keys, where she at first languishes, in love with companion and soul-mate Nick, who's homosexual, and then impulsively marries Vietnam vet Dennis, who turns out to be a dangerous drunk. ``The Interior Studio,'' more coherently structured as a conflict between art and the biological clock, pits Lela's painting against her desire for love and family when she meets Lewis Frame and gets pregnant at age 38. She resolves her dilemma rather absurdly by painting a series of curly-haired babies. ``The Good Listener'' is a well-written clichÇ about a writer who neglects a female student in order to have an affair with a colleague, then gets his comeuppance at a reading. At her best, Dark reveals the dislocations of contemporary life, while in her lesser moments she settles for banalities that are only a notch above popular fiction.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-395-57818-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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