Worth wading through the tears for the generous helping of Daisy Dooley wisdom.
Self-help junkie comes to terms with her divorce.
Daisy knew she married the wrong man. It was obvious, yet rather than trust her instincts, she forged ahead with her marriage plans to avoid becoming that desperate cliché—a desperate-for-babies career gal in her late 30s. A few years into her painfully dull marriage, Daisy has the courage to get out and try again. Don’t be mistaken by this one heroic act. Daisy isn’t naturally prone to action. To the contrary, after she leaves her husband, Daisy enjoys a nice long pity party held at her mother’s country digs. Besides her tireless mum, Daisy relies on her two closest pals, Jess and Lucy, to help mend her wounds and to listen to her ramblings. Be prepared for the tear fest that ensues as Daisy performs a postmortem on her marriage. Things appear pretty gloomy for this jobless divorcee as she prepares to re-enter the dating pool. Cue more floodworks when Daisy has a disastrous first “PPD” (post-divorce date). It gets so bad that readers stand the chance of drowning in Daisy’s misery and misfortune. But Pasternak (Princess in Love, 1994) gets things moving again. Daisy lands a job and starts revamping her love life. Reinventing herself as a self-help guru, she garners attention from book lovers and publishers as she helps London’s singles mend their hearts. Romantically, things start to look up when Daisy reconnects with Julius, her lifelong love. But don’t wait for the neat and tidy happy ending. Pasternak’s second novel is an unexpected treat: Daisy challenges everyone in her orbit to embrace living in the moment and to let go of expectations.
Worth wading through the tears for the generous helping of Daisy Dooley wisdom.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-17794-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
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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