Pedophilia, Satanism, a closeted politician, and an astonishing number of semi-closeted priests reunite a prosperous Irish Catholic shrink and his long-lost love, now a Ph.D. candidate but still ravishing. Father Greeley (Wages of Sin, p. 627; et many al.) puts his big, familiar cast of Chicagoans through incredible punishment, but they always come up smiling. Kathleen Leary married big, handsome Brien Donahue instead of smallish, clever boyfriend Kieran O'Kerrigan back in the 70's because her dominating older brother James thought it best. Now James is a bishop; Kieran is a psychoanalyst; Kathleen is a mother and student; and Brien is a wife-beating, alcoholic, closeted homosexual lawyer whose lover has been calling Kathleen when he's not busy arranging his Satanic rituals. Oh, and Brien is also about to announce his candidacy for the upcoming senatorial primary. James, a stuffed-shirt careerist, tries to keep a lid on Kathleen and Brien's problems—while also trying to squelch a suburban couple who are suing the church for reassigning their young son's abuser, a pedophile priest, to another parish, which is how the archdiocese has been handling its pedophilia problems for years. James involves Kieran in the investigation of the pedophilia business, unaware that his sister, after years of separation, feels her love for Dr. O'Kerrigan reawakening. Meanwhile, Kathleen, who has the glorious red hair and magnificent breasts without which no Greeley heroine is complete, hacks away at her Ph.D., mothers three teenaged daughters, endures incredible abuse from her alcoholic mother, alcoholic husband, and alcoholic in-laws, and still, good Chicago Irish-Catholic politician that she is, agrees to put off a divorce until after the primary. Events, however, overtake everybody. Maddening. Nobody writing today has a better handle than Greeley does on his important and colorful corners of the world, but to get those insights invariably requires swallowing great doses of treacly, fake-Irish dialogue and swoony, moony romance. And, no matter how many demons he trots onstage, the outcome is never in doubt.
Pub Date: March 24, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-13723-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
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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