A sharp, sad portrait of the vagaries of the literary life. Schiller, the author of four well-received but long out-of- print novels, a tidy, precise, ironic figure, and a man consumed much of his life by the need to pursue the ``perfection of the work,'' has long since given up on any real hope of visibility when a young woman seeks him out. Heather, just 24, is writing her master's thesis on Schiller's slender body of work. Ambitious, blithely self-centered, she views Schiller as a useful crusade, a way of forcing herself onto the academic and publishing scenes. The elderly Schiller, left fragile and exhausted by a series of brushes with mortality, is at first wary of her, bemused by the idea of anyone paying much attention to what he views as a failed career. Her insistent presence also prods he into coming to grips with the guilt and regret he has stored up about his life, including the early death of his wife, and the hectic, unfocused life of Ariel, his middle-aged daughter. Almost inevitably, Schiller finds himself falling in love with the seemingly worshipful Heather, an emotion she encourages, with predictably dire results. Schiller is moved to begin again on a novel long set aside, and Heather imagines that she will be the muse inspiring the creation of his greatest work. Then Schiller has a stroke and, in a series of terse, acerbic scenes, Morton deftly strips away the illusions these characters have spun about their lives. Ariel finds a measure of independence and maturity and, in a nicely rendered interlude, a chance at genuine romance. Heather's lies and manipulations catch up with her, though her exposure does not necessarily alter her behavior. And Schiller, near death, begins to reach some measure of peace. Second-novelist Morton (The Dylanist, 1991) believably anatomizes the yearnings (and furies) that fuel the literary life, and in Schiller he has shaped a sad, wry portrait of the writer as a deluded but decent—and ultimately rather noble—Everyman.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-517-70862-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
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
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
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