An intriguing tale with a clever narrative twist that nearly compensates for its lack of dramatic excitement.
Lawton’s (Imagining Russia 2000, 2004) novel looks at the half-century journey of two best friends who moved from Italy to the United States in 1967.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Amy is in her 50s and living in New York City. She was born and raised around Turin, Italy, at the end of the 1940s, the wealthy daughter of an American, Larry, and an Italian, Anna. The fact that Amy had a foreign father caused local kids to shun her, but she did have one best friend—an Italian girl named Stella. Now, in 2001, she’s taken over Larry’s publishing house and is committed to finally publishing what she feels is the most important manuscript in her possession—Stella’s diaries, written between 1967 and 1985. Much of Stella’s memoir, which comprises Part 2 of this novel, is about her deep, complicated relationship with Jim Welsh, a film scholar and teacher in Venice, California. Jim is moody, Stella is restless, and after a few years, they separate. The first-person manuscript ends abruptly in 1985, and Part 3 of the narrative jumps to 2001 once again as Amy decides to turn Stella’s memoir into a novel. Savvy readers will suspect that something isn’t quite as it appears, as Italian author Lawton, in her first novel in English, effectively drops breadcrumbs along the way. Her prose is more expository than passionate in nature, and it includes numerous engaging discussions about the political, cultural, and social movements roiling America in different eras. However, these sometimes come at the expense of a fuller portrayal of Amy and Stella’s immigrant journey. Readers may wish that Lawton had provided more about how the women found their place and purpose in a new country in changing times.
An intriguing tale with a clever narrative twist that nearly compensates for its lack of dramatic excitement.Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9974962-1-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: New Academia Publishing/ The Spring
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2018
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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