Re-telling the story of Jesus is like re-inventing the wheel—it's Been Done, leaving a novelist merely the option of new alignments. This novel is based on Burgess' screen play for Zeffirelli's TV film, and considering the formidable hurdles, it's a somewhat strained but certainly consistent version. Burgess uses an anonymous, detached narrator who manages to bring the miracles and the teachings of Jesus—couched in a muscular idiom that sheds all mystic shadings—into a fairly comfortable balance. Some miracles are reported simply and briefly (the raising of Lazarus, the appearance of the angel at the Annunciation and Nativity); one is twisted into an amusing possibility (at the marriage at Cana, the Prophet extolls water as wine for the Good); and a few are left misty but not mystic (at the birth of Jesus: "There was the sound of music, whether of the heavenly host singing Holy, holy, holy or of drunken men in the tavern, I do not know. . ."). Jesus here is a man of powerful voice and body, "a man who could eat whole sheep and wrestle with lions," and along the way Burgess indulges in some rather playful innovations—Jesus is married briefly to a wife who dies; Jesus and John the Baptist, as boys, discuss their future. He also worries a variegated humanity from the supporting cast: Judas is a young vulnerable intellectual; Thomas is a Downstairs retainer; the Romans are cynically witty; the Zealots steely activists. His main thrift, however, is the portrait of Jesus as a good and brilliant man for whom the kingdom of heaven could be on earth: "Enter the house of death and you leave time behind. . . . You may even say that the kingdom is now, that heaven and hell are now." Make of this what you will theologically—call it liberal Protestant or radical Catholic—but Burgess deserves A for effort in an impossible assignment.
Pub Date: April 8, 1979
ISBN: 0553133187
Page Count: 308
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1979
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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