For all the author’s customary elegance, this is one of the weaker novels in the series.
The fourth in Pérez-Reverte’s series of five historicals about the Spanish Captain Alatriste (The Sun Over Breda, 2007, etc.) is long on ambiance but short on plot.
It’s 1626 and Captain Alatriste and Íñigo Balboa are arriving back in Spain after fighting in Flanders. Alatriste is now middle-aged, still laconic and increasingly world-weary, but as deadly as ever in battle. Balboa has come of age and is a practiced swordsman himself, thanks to Alatriste’s tutelage. The Captain has been his surrogate father since his own father died on the battlefield. On reaching Seville, Alatriste receives a new assignment. The treasure fleet, bringing riches from the New World, is expected very soon. One galleon is carrying gold ingots in secret; the property of the Treasury is being unlawfully diverted. The court has gotten wind of the scheme, however; Alatriste must recruit a band of ruffians to retrieve the loot. That assault on the rogue galleon does not come until the end. In the interim the author shows us a corrupt society, awash in money, on “a slow road to nowhere.” Spain, heedless of its soldiers’ sacrifices, is “rarely a mother and more often a wicked stepmother.” Yet Alatriste and his young disciple are themselves incorruptible, believing in honor and unwavering allegiance to the king, a tension at the heart of the story. Balboa is also in love, bewitched by his contemporary Angélica, maid of honor to the Queen, a love which almost costs him his life during a dangerous nocturnal tryst. That scene, and another in which Alatriste scares a corrupt merchant half to death, constitute the only action before the climax, and it’s not enough. Just as disappointing is the author’s refusal to penetrate the “personal wilderness” of the brooding Alatriste, a failure that is not disguised by the quirky charm of the interpolated snatches of verse, some of them from the celebrated playwright Lope de Vega.
For all the author’s customary elegance, this is one of the weaker novels in the series.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15510-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
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
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