A spirited, often comical courtroom tale brimming with genuine characters.
In this dramedy, a legal secretary tackles a friend’s personal injury case, which requires posing as a lawyer—her dead boss.
Gertie Chase and Dorothy “Dot” Swayne have been working for Louise Barbour for nearly two decades when the Texas attorney suddenly dies at her desk. Louise’s indolent son, Clarence, who wants the building to open a vape shop, demands the private practice’s files be farmed out to other lawyers. But one file catches Gertie’s eye: a personal injury case involving her longtime friend Nelda Fay Blatchford. Nelda’s husband, Clifford, had developed cancer, which a doctor determined was from exposure to asbestos at work. As Louise apparently neglected the matter and Clifford has since died, Gertie decides to see the case through, with help from Dot and their co-worker/friend Guadalupe “Lupe” Maria Sylvia-Sotomayor. Gertie will just have to take on the role of Louise, but only until she can reach a settlement. When Clifford’s ex-boss Waite Morrison doesn’t show up to the mediation and his attorney, Alexander Shiras, makes a lowball offer, Gertie and Nelda opt for a trial. Having picked up skills by assisting Louise, Gertie can hold her own in the ensuing courtroom battle, provided no one learns her true identity. Clary (Unfinished Business, 2016, etc.) tactfully deals with serious subjects. Gertie worries about her husband, Jack, who experiences frequent pain from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, and Nelda, who’s Creole, is no stranger to racism (likely the reason Louise abandoned her case). But there’s also humor in abundance. An example—and the book’s highlight—is when Gertie, whose car is blocking Shiras’ at the mediation, feigns a prolonged search for her keys. The author’s flair for rapid-fire dialogue leads to bustling courtroom scenes, which monopolize the novel’s latter half. These scenes furthermore distinguish the amiable heroine (small-town Gertie easily connects with prospective jurors) from antagonistic Shiras, who constantly objects and interrupts witnesses he’s questioning on the stand.
A spirited, often comical courtroom tale brimming with genuine characters.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5382-5
Page Count: 285
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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