A sometimes-didactic but often entertaining set of gender-bending yarns.
Cisnormative folklore conventions become violently upended in this collection of gender-fluid fairy tales.
Mardoll (Transcending Flesh, 2018, etc.) creates a fictive world of dragons, witches, wicked royals, swordplay, and sorcery—and plot contrivances that hinge on seemingly sex-specific prophecies that get twisted into pretzels by characters’ gender nonconformity. Unexpected confrontations ensue. In “Tangled Nets,” a dragon that claims a yearly human sacrifice from villagers, boasting that “no man nor woman would ever kill it,” is challenged by a knife-wielding fisherperson who is neither man nor woman and goes by the pronouns “xie” and “xer.” Conversely, in “King’s Favor,” an evil Witch-Queen who fears a prophecy that she will be killed by a male-female duo of mages gets flummoxed when a person claiming to be “both man and woman” (“nee” and “ner”) appears before her throne. That pattern of trans hero(in)es turning the tables on complacent gender assumptions continues throughout the winsome collection. In “His Father’s Son,” an orphan boy named Nocien (“he” and “him”), who others think is a girl, seeks vengeance on Guyon, a chieftain who killed the youth’s father, Cadfen. The orphan is pursuing a prophecy that a son of Cadfen will kill Guyon, which ironically lulls the chieftain into a false sense of security since he doesn’t imagine that Nocien is actually a boy. Likewise, in the Arthurian “Daughter of Kings,” Finndís (“she” and “her”), whom everyone takes for King Njall’s son, sets out to recover a magic sword stuck in a stone that, according to prophecy, can only be pulled out by a female descendant of the monarch. The plot formula descends into witting self-parody in the title story, which has characters who want to assassinate King Fearghas debate whether shifting away from masculine identification (to pronouns “kie” and “ker” or first-person “they” and “them”) will let them get around a prophecy that “no man of woman born” can kill the tyrant. At times, the author’s trans politics feels obtrusive—“Whether you’re a boy, or a girl, or both, or neither, or something else entirely, Eoghan and I will love you”—and readers may conclude that much trouble would be saved if the Soothsayers Guild warned the public that gender is too subjective and ambiguous a concept for reliable prophesying. Still, there’s much to enjoy in these imaginative stories. They feature lively action (“The dominant left hand…darted out to grab a knife from a man’s belt and stab it into the thick flesh of his thigh”), spooky atmospherics (“Her smile grew wider and the red glow of the strange flickering moss reflected off two rows of surprisingly numerous teeth”), and subtle observations (“A long pause, gentle in intent if not delivery, conveyed all the sighs the Queen never breathed”). Mardoll often infuses a droll comic sensibility into the enchantments, especially in "Early to Rise," a sparkling takeoff on "Sleeping Beauty," in which Prince(ss) Claude ("she," "her," "he," "him," "they," and "them" as her/his/their gender veers between feminine, masculine, and both at once) dispenses with true love’s kiss and instigates pragmatic negotiations with an angry fairy godmother. Readers of all orientations should appreciate the author’s assured storytelling and supple prose.
A sometimes-didactic but often entertaining set of gender-bending yarns.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-987412-91-8
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Acacia Moon Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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