Though this is far from a perfect novel, there's enough spark in the first-person narration to make it worthwhile.
A holiday destination for devout Hindus is not as holy as it claims to be in this Man Booker Prize–longlisted novel.
The fictional seaside town of Jarmuli is home to many temples and ashrams, where gurus offer spiritual guidance to Indians and Westerners. The novel opens with a harrowing scene of violence which leaves a young girl orphaned. She's put on a boat to Jarmuli and is taken in by a seemingly benevolent guru. To outsiders, his ashram appears to be a spiritual paradise, but on the inside, there is rampant physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Later, 25-year-old Nomi Frederiksen, the orphaned girl from the beginning of the novel, recalls these incidents on a return trip to Jarmuli, where she claims to be filming a documentary. On a train, she meets three elderly women named Gouri, Latika, and Vidya, lifelong friends taking one last holiday together before Gouri becomes completely senile. These four travelers come across Badal, a temple guide who lusts after an underage boy, and Johnny Toppo, an old tea seller who sings mournful songs to his customers. Helping Nomi with her documentary is part-time cameraman Suraj, a middle-aged alcoholic who happens to be Vidya’s son. The strength of this novel lies in the first-person narration of Nomi, who recounts her tale of loss and abuse in beautiful, unflinching language. Her chapters alternate with chapters told in third person about the secondary characters, which do nothing to move the story forward or shed light on Nomi’s past or the legacy of sexual abuse behind the guise of spirituality in India. Gradually, the various threads lose their energy and fail to come together toward a satisfying resolution. The novel raises questions, certainly, but its refusal to tie things up with a neat bow leaves the ending feeling coy and unfairly ambiguous.
Though this is far from a perfect novel, there's enough spark in the first-person narration to make it worthwhile.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-555-97751-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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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