This gritty novel about the pain others can inflict provides an unexpected sense of hope.
A wry teacher creates controlled chaos in her high school classroom in this tragicomic novel set in Texas.
Ellie Warden is a perfectly named character. As a teacher in a high school behavior-modification unit, her responsibilities lean more toward prison guard than educator. Ellie’s students in the New Pathways unit (or, as she has dubbed them, the Narcissistic Praise-Junkies) are a group of troubled kids with learning and behavioral problems, including OCD and Asperger’s syndrome. Ellie is full of patience and tough love. She copes with the stresses of her job with a hearty dose of black humor: She privately nicknames the kids based on their disorders (Becca, who suffers from OCD, is The Count; Trevor, who has Tourette’s syndrome, is Twitch) and talks about their various disabilities with a faux insensitivity that masks her compassion. But in many ways, Ellie is just as much of a misfit as her students. She’s a single, 32-year-old virgin who still lives at home with her cat and her religious mother, who raised Ellie to be mistrustful of relationships and marriage. Her monotonous life changes instantly when a horrific school shooting involves one of her students—an event that leaves Ellie shattered, although it pushes her toward an unlikely love interest, Dr. Peter Harmon. Peter, the uncle of one of Ellie’s students, is a smart, successful veterinarian—and he has Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a joy to watch their relationship blossom in the aftermath of the shooting and in spite of the complications associated with his condition. Bennett beautifully portrays Ellie’s quick wit, sharp sense of humor and deep vulnerability, and she provides an exquisitely rendered look at living with Asperger’s. Heavy themes suffuse the novel—sexuality, religion, prejudice and death—yet Bennett artfully provides moments of levity and humor. Her characters are realistic, heroic and flawed. Don’t let the tough talk fool you; Bennett’s book has heart.
This gritty novel about the pain others can inflict provides an unexpected sense of hope.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469924724
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
