Vintage Bradford, with lavish descriptions of the pleasures of palate and palette, victims as virtuous as they are gorgeous,...
Bradford’s latest rags-to-riches heroine is a London fine-art consultant with a dark secret—several of them, in fact.
Annette Remmington is still plagued by nightmares of the childhood sexual abuse she suffered. Rescued by a kindly aunt who paid for her education, Annette had a brief career as a painter before her marriage to dashing gallery impresario Marius Remmington, 20 years her senior. Only Marius knows of Annette’s other dark secret, which gives him leverage to keep her complacent and docile. When inquiries are made about a certain Hilda Crump, Annette fears that if the truth were known, she could land in jail for murder. Now 40, Annette has scored a coup. A new client, Christopher, has inherited a cache of art from his eccentric Uncle Alec, including a Rembrandt, which Annette has just auctioned for several million pounds. There are plenty more canvases lurking at the gloomy old castle formerly owned by Uncle Alec, who, everyone agrees, went a little dotty after his fiancée, clad in her wedding gown, hanged herself in the bedroom. Annette is planning another auction for Christopher, which will include a previously unknown cast of Degas’ sculpture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, and paintings by other Impressionist masters. However, Annette and her advisors have discovered that several pieces in Uncle Alec’s collection are forgeries. When Marius insists she promote her upcoming auction, she agrees to talk to Jack Chalmers, a reporter Marius has handpicked. Little does Marius suspect that Annette and Jack will immediately recognize each other as soul mates. And little does Annette know that when Marius is in Barcelona supposedly working on a book about Picasso, he’s actually emulating Picasso’s philandering behavior. The plotlines proliferate until we realize that secrets from Jack’s childhood are the key to unlocking the dilemmas keeping him and Annette apart.
Vintage Bradford, with lavish descriptions of the pleasures of palate and palette, victims as virtuous as they are gorgeous, cruel lotharios and a satisfying if somewhat far-fetched resolution.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-57808-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
IN THE NEWS
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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