The two versions, though, are useful to students of Rand’s work—and there’s a dissertation waiting in her use of the stilted...
Atlas yawned.
Someone somewhere, an acolyte or junior editor, thought it was a good idea to pull up a novel that Rand, the late cult writer and Social Security recipient, had kept in a drawer—and kept there for good reason, having tried the story in both prose and drama forms and preferred the latter. The setup is one of those Death Takes a Holiday morality plays so beloved in the days before Ernest Hemingway taught writers how to be vigorous: a Hollywood star, wanted for murder and on the lam, decides to test the adoration of six fans who had written her adoring letters—and, being a Howard Roark in furs, finds them wanting. Penned one, “Do you wonder why I am writing all this to you? It is because when I look at you on the screen, I know what it is that I want of life.” Yes, but is it what Kay Gonda wants? No, and what Kay Gonda wants, Kay Gonda gets. Kay, natch, has reason to be disappointed: she kills with kindness, like a lioness thinning a herd, but one unappreciative lumpenprole (“Aw, shut yer old face!”) dares hint at the possibility of turning her in for the fat reward offered in light of her crime. (And was it a crime? Ah, dear reader….) One character is a socialist on the way to repentance, another a cynic, another a soul-saver: they’re not characters but types, in trademark Rand fashion—for Rand, though certainly no socialist, traded heavily in social-realist symbols. The play version is a touch more successful if only because it’s a touch less talky (says Kay, imperiously cutting to the chase: “You can throw me out, if you wish. You can call the police, if you prefer. Only do so now.”). Still, neither leaps from the page to scream in testimonial to the author’s genius.
The two versions, though, are useful to students of Rand’s work—and there’s a dissertation waiting in her use of the stilted possessive. Otherwise, a mere curio.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-47555-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: New American Library
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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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