The latest entry in the Gen-X slacker sweepstakes comes from Australia, and adds an appropriate down-under twist to the familiar Gen-X fondness for doing nothing and writing about it. The title refers to the year of Australia's Bicentennial, a much hyped event that would of course turn a young man's fancy to rebellion. In '80s terms, rebellion means retreating into apathy and oblivion. The narrator of this angst-filled saga is Gordon Buchanan (also the protagonist of McGahan's first novel, Praise, 1993), a college dropout and would-be writer who lumbers along in Brisbane as a barman living in a crumbling house with lots of Chinese exchange students. He suffers, naturally, from ``a weakness of character, a poor diet, and alcohol.'' No surprise, given his low-energy existence and his sexual confusion—all de rigueur in the slacker profile. Things move along (sort of) when Gordon accepts the offer of an acquaintance to accompany him for six months to the outback. Together, they'll man a weather station in the remote North country, where their only companions will be a drunk and bitter Park Ranger, a dog, and a couple of resentful Aborigines, who now control the land. Completely unprepared for the profound isolation of Cape Don, Gordon and his buddy, Wayne, an aspiring artist, assume they'll take the opportunity to get creative. Instead, they drink, smoke pot, screw up their simple job responsibilities, and, of course, grow to hate each other. Then a week alone on the Cape pushes Gordon close to madness. A visit from a ranger who truly appreciates the wonders of remote Australia reminds the two Brisbane boys of what serious losers they are. This anti-romance of the road and of primitive culture suffers from the obvious problems of re-creating boredom—how do you do it without being boring? What's acclaimed as a fresh voice from down under sounds woefully stale up here.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15043-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
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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