First fiction, set at the end of WW I, in which a frontier Kenyan hotel provides rest, shelter, and large drinks to a fugitive Gypsy, wounded Tommies, murderous Irishmen, scheming Portuguese colonials, displaced Germans, an American cowboy, and a pretty Welsh woman. Bull's nonfiction Safari (1988) covered some of the same geography. Having sold the bulk of his British estate and mismanaged his plantation ventures, Adam Penfold finds that his fortune has dwindled to the White Rhino, a hotel in the Kenyan highlands. Lord Penfold and his oppressively horsy lady Sissy preside over the place, leaving management to their major-domo Olivio, a dwarf whose spying and sexual skills are state of the art. As there is much to spy out and many itches to scratch, Olivio is a very busy man. The end of the war has brought a new wave of settlers to the colony, hopeful men and women who are about to find out that the rich Kenyan soils are very choosy about what crops they'll support and that the old Kenyan colonials can be as treacherous as the worst villains in Europe. Anton Rider, with his gypsy skills and restless intelligence, is one of the few immigrants truly suited to the whims of Africa. Dashing Anton has become smitten with Gwenn Llewellyn, who has joined her badly crippled husband to carve out a new life and who has already made a couple of very dangerous enemies in a pair of violent Irish brothers. Adam and Gwenn are made for each other, but before they sort things out, there are swamps to ford, savannahs to cross, dalliances to be enjoyed, pythons to wrestle, elephants to cook, and legal business to sort out. Very nicely done. Bull has sensibly resisted the temptation to turn his racy African adventures into a sweeping, gabby epic, so everything moves at a cracking pace. Much ground is covered, but since the time is short, the stories are well contained.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-83998-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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