The author of Redcoat and the popular Sharpe series of historical military adventures drops into the 20th century for a yachting thriller about an unwilling earl and a missing van Gogh. The Earl of Stowey has decided that there's not much point in using one's hereditary title if one hasn't been left enough money to dress for the job. So he's just John Rossendale to his yachting bum cronies. Sailing the world on Sunflower, the sailboat he was able to buy with the little he was left, Rossendale has spent four years away from home and away from his odious mother and spiteful twin sister. But the bankers have called. Mum is on her deathbed and would he please have the decency to sail home and say good-bye? Nobleman that he is, Rossendale returns only to receive his mother's dying curse. The problem is that everybody seems to think John stole the family van Gogh, their last remaining art treasure, the sale of which would have kept the manor in the family. Worse yet, everybody thinks he still has the painting, and they're trying to get it back. A pair of goons sent by persons unknown are ready to demolish his yacht in the search for van Gogh's sunflowers. And the ravishing Jennifer Pallavicini, stepdaughter to England's nouveau richest collector, is ready to offer 20 million pounds on behalf of dad. But John hasn't the faintest idea where the painting is. He'd run away from the lot of them, but his evil twin is threatening to wrench their idiot sister away from her asylum in order to get control of her trust fund. And this Miss Pallavicini is awfully pretty. . . Competent but unexceptional sails-and-slaughter adventure. Mildly violent.
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1989
ISBN: 0061000469
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989
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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