Spencer achieves what most debut writers merely attempt: He gives personal experience universal meaning and makes small-town tragedy profound. Sharp insight and sensitive prose distinguish what might have been a familiar tale of a dysfunctional family. The author gives his version additional interest by employing the perspectives of three different people: the jilted boyfriend, the abandoned son, and the girlfriend/mother who can't take it anymore. Each voice is distinct and unique; all three impress and convince. As the novel opens, it has been six months since Ellen ran out on Redmond, leaving her 16-year-old son, Nick, in his care. Gradually, as Redmond and Nick work on their farm in northeastern Pennsylvania, we learn more about the older man's stormy 12-year relationship with Ellen. They met during one of her habitual nights out at the local bar. Attracted to needy, vulnerable women, he wanted more than a one-night stand, despite discovering four-year-old Nick in her trailer-home bathtub. But Redmond often became violent and sometimes disappeared for months at a time, though he always came back. After Ellen herself finally leaves, Nick blames Redmond, and their interactions become increasingly antagonistic: The boy electrocutes Redmond while they're repairing the pasture fence; he retaliates by trapping Nick in the chicken coop. A lot happens as a prelude to the trio's ultimate confrontation. During her bus journey home Ellen realizes she must reclaim her son and confront her lover in order to take back her life (Spencer deserves applause here for capturing women so well). Redmond sorts though memories of childhood abuse and confronts his nemesis when the father he hasn't seen in years comes to town. And Nick survives the pain of loneliness and isolation by emotionally manipulating Redmond, hoping his life will change, and falling in love. Tender, skillful, and true.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-55970-266-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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