Lively and quick-witted, but pretty claustrophobic after a while. Though a nice portrait of the downtown scene, it will wear...
In the latest New York hipster saga from Nersesian (Chinese Takeout, 2003, etc.), a young Yalie tries to make a name for herself on Broadway and resorts to all the usual ploys.
The casting couch is a long and dishonorable tradition in the theater, but poor Hannah Cohn goes the extra mile: She becomes a lesbian, not for a part, but an apartment. And even that goes bust when her girlfriend Christy (Hannah’s old drama teacher at Yale) catches her making out with film producer Franklin Stein and tosses her out on her ear. Franklin makes vague promises to Hannah about a small role in his upcoming film, but the best he does in the short run is help her find a new place. Down but not out, Hannah slogs away at temp jobs and drags herself to auditions week after week. But when an old Yale classmate tells her he’s secured the production rights for a long-lost play by feminist cult icon Lily Bull (read: Valerie Solanas), Hannah takes the bull by the horns and scrapes up the cash to mount the production. Obscure and despised in her own lifetime, Bull (who once tried to kill downtown pop artist Gary Ganghole) is best known now for her man-hating diatribe C.O.C.K., but she also wrote a weird play called Unlubricated about a group of blocked writers who meet to talk out their frustrations but explode with rage when one of their group completes a successful epic. Not exactly Broadway material, but Hannah figures it will be enough of a splash to get her the publicity she needs to move on to bigger things. What she hasn’t figured on, though, are landlord disputes, copyright lawsuits, megalomaniacal directors, traitors, and plagiarists. That is, the usual New York nuisances.
Lively and quick-witted, but pretty claustrophobic after a while. Though a nice portrait of the downtown scene, it will wear thin on outsiders.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-073411-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
