Smith certainly knows baseball, and she’s created a full-dimensioned, interesting character in Cassidy. In the end, though,...
The author of North of Montana (1994) uses the world of baseball, as seen through the eyes of a female scout whose career depends on finding hidden talent for the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, as the backdrop for this mystery thriller.
Cassidy Sanderson is a rarity: a female talent scout in a world predominantly populated by men. An ex-ballplayer herself—with the Colorado Silver Bullets, an all-women’s professional team—the blond stunner receives a call one day from “Uncle Pedro,” a friend of her late father’s, who has spotted a can’t-miss prospect in that hotbed of talent, the Dominican Republic. In the competitive world of sports, Cassidy must act quickly, and so she makes an unauthorized trip south, where, in the midst of a devastating hurricane, she signs the 18-year-old Alberto Cruz, then brings him back to L.A. She also brings back a lover, a particularly appealing albeit mysterious developer by the name of Joe Galinis. And, unfortunately, along with the whiz-bang ballplayer and the lover, she’s bringing back something else: death threats, aimed first at Cruz, then at Galinis. Who’s behind them? Why are they being made? Will they destroy Cruz’s shot at becoming a big league star? While Cassidy tries to find the answers to these questions, and herself becomes the target of the blackmailers, she struggles with coming to grips with the death of her brother, as well as with being a single young woman in her 30s who’s trying to carve out a place for herself in the macho world of sports.
Smith certainly knows baseball, and she’s created a full-dimensioned, interesting character in Cassidy. In the end, though, despite her breezy, almost screenplay-like style, the story falls disappointingly flat.Pub Date: July 2, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-45096-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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