Readers who come to this second novel (after The Whole Truth, 1990—not reviewed) expecting a lighthearted skewering of American country club elite are in for something of a shock—and a delightful read. Robinson has produced nothing less than a contemporary horror story set against the backdrop of the American Dream. The member-guest of the title is Augie Wittenbecher, a divorced, middle-aged lawyer invited to play golf as the partner of an old college chum at the posh Easthelmsford Country Club on Long Island. But Gordon McSweeney, whom Augie has not seen for years, is a man whose life and career are going to seed. His frustrated, sex- starved wife Catherine makes it obvious from the start that her only interest in the weekend is bedding (and re-bedding) Augie. The club turns out to be a most unfriendly place indeed, centerpiece of a world in which golf has become such an all-consuming obsession for many that a young woman has a nervous breakdown at a dinner party and begins eating her wineglass. And when the most beautiful woman he has ever met seems inexplicably drawn to Augie, she turns out to be the fiancÇe of his old prep-school rival. Battered, beaten, but never defeated, Augie and partner struggle on to the championship round against a team of that schoolboy nemesis and the autocratic father of the woman they both love. Even then, things aren't settled until a final ``nineteenth hole'' confrontation. Golfers with a sense of humor—and perspective—should enjoy this often hilarious look at their sometimes inbred little corner of our culture almost as much as a perfect afternoon on the links.
Pub Date: June 10, 1991
ISBN: 1-55611-268-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
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
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
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