In a daring romp through history, theology, sex, language, and espionage, the late Burgess (A Mouthful of Air, 1993, etc.) contrives a disarmingly realistic literary thriller with an unlikely sybarite as its hero. The dead man of the title is none other than the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (or, as Burgess indicates, Merlin or Marlin — last names were more capriciously assigned in the 16th century), who may or may not have been murdered in a Deptford tavern brawl in 1593. The author of Tamburlaine the Great, Doctor Faustus, and The Jew of Malta has always languished, somewhat unfairly, in Shakespeare's shadow, but Burgess manages to restore a lot of spice to "Kit" Marlowe's reputation. The playwright's homosexuality has been adequately documented, and Burgess knows few scruples in reimagining the blend of ribald glee and illicit melancholy that Kit and his various boyfriends bring to the higher sodomy. He also offers glimpses of their strained, early-modern morals, which emerge from intellectual skirmishes between rote Christian irrationality and pagan Greek and Latin erudition. Though history says little about it, Marlowe may also have done some spying for Protestant Queen Elizabeth, who during her reign was besieged from France, Spain, and Scotland by the Catholic menace — at any rate, Burgess takes the conceit and runs with it, smuggling the young playwright across the English Channel and up to the Highlands on missions to thwart Elizabeth's scheming usurpers. Along the way, Marlowe learns to smoke from Sir Walter Raleigh, helps Shakespeare get started on Henry VI, Part One, and still finds time to crank out his plays while courting fame, if not wealth. Burgess has mastered, as perhaps only he could, the arch, quasi-poetic diction of the period, along with a welter of details, from clothes to cuisine to the inescapable tyranny that religious elites wielded over everyday life. A fitting final tribute from one great English writer to the genius of another.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-7867-0192-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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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