Salinger's Catcher remains the gold standard. Crazy is only another imitation.
Shades of Holden Caulfield in the wicked city, on the lam from Pencey Prep.
That's pretty much the story of this already famous first novel by a German teenager (born in 1982 yet), which has inexplicably been hailed in his country's press as ``a thoroughly amazing and wonderful book'' (Der Spiegel). It isn't. It's the firstperson tale (narrated in present tense and in short, punchy sentences and sentence fragments) of a 16yearold disabled boy named ``Benjamin Lebert'' who is partially paralyzed—and, hence, understandably enough, an academic underachiever who is sent to boarding school (ostensibly to repeat ninth grade; actually to be protected from the spectacle of his parents' marriage collapsing). Benjamin might be a more engaging character if he and his schoolmates (including Fat Felix, depressive Troy, and Benjamin's romanticfool roommate, Janosch) were less generic and their ``adventures'' less derivative. A hopeful visit to a sex therapist, for example, falls woefully flat. A raid on the girls' dorm is both attenuated and thinly described (though Benjamin does lose his virginity). A willfully ``crazy'' afterhours trip to nearby Munich—where Benjamin and his pals bond with a clean old man who gets them admitted (quite unbelievably) to a strip joint—never manages to be as madcap as Lebert seemingly intends, because the boys' moony animadversions on the subjects of Life, God, and Sex are unfortunately both redundant and banal. Only very occasionally does an impudent insight rear its head (``Life's too complicated.''/``Yes, . . . but girls are hot''). If you keep reminding yourself its author is barely 18, Crazy becomes, barely, tolerable. The novel simply traverses ground we've been over too many times already and makes far too little of its protagonist's potential uniqueness.
Salinger's Catcher remains the gold standard. Crazy is only another imitation.Pub Date: April 21, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40913-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
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
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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