More about the biology of angels, subgenus werewolf, by biologist-sociologist-novelist Stableford—in volume two of a trilogy begun with the well-received The Werewolves of London (1992) and to be rounded out by The Carnival of Destruction. Queen Victoria's London (it's 1893) is still haunted by werewolves. The asp-like snake that bit David Lydyard in remotest Egypt infused him with the soul of the Sphinx, the slowly awakening great cat-mother of the fallen Creators from the Golden Age of the Gods. Now the Sphinx wants to be born again, but civilization has brought such changes that the Sphinx needs human interpreters to help clear her mind. There are, however, seven fallen angels ruling the earth in their own way, three of them hostile. It's been 20 years since David was bitten in Egypt, and he suffers the tortures of Prometheus and Satan with advanced rheumatoid arthritis and a constant pain laudanum relieves only slightly—a pain David calls the Angel of Pain. Not until he comes to terms with this Angel will he be released. But the hostile (?) werewolves themselves attack and infect him with a new transformation—though not into a werewolf. Also returned is ultrabeautiful wolfwoman Mandorla, seemingly not a day older, who befriends David. But David has heavy problems—one being an invasion of waking dreams and dreams within dreams, as he unfolds into a new being. Will the rejuvenated David, his arthritis fled, outlive his wife and children by a thousand years, when the fallen angels themselves have been here ten thousand, though they sleep for centuries, then wake to an ever new world of men? Will there be a Satanic Eden? The best pages, midway, are a long disquisition on pain and its general uselessness in human health. As ever, Stableford is talky, with eruptions of action that subside into more talk and heavy decor.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-88184-932-4
Page Count: 396
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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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