A debut short story collection depicts men in the 21st-century American South.
A college dropout drifts from his mother’s home to the dwelling of an older German lover whose husband is serving in Iraq. A graduate student comes to terms with his intersectional identity. A frustrated science professor methodically destroys his own marriage. The men in the 11 stories in Haraway’s collection are all faced with momentous decisions. They can create or destroy; they can move forward or stagnate. They can become—or not become—the men they are capable of being. Scattered across the South, from Tennessee to Texas (with the exception of one outlying story set in the Colorado Rockies), the author’s carefully crafted characters are products of their regions, families, and circumstances. Several of them are young, just figuring out how to be men, but others are careening into middle age or widowerhood. The heroes of “The Doughnut Rebellion” are old enough that they reside in a nursing home. At times, Haraway can be heavy-handed. In “Back to Zero,” a young white resident of Memphis discusses an overlooked African-American musician’s career with a friend and observes to himself: “I never thought much about privilege, the thousand moments like this where one life is easier than another one, where obstacles are got around.” This is an important realization for a young white man, to be sure—and demonstrates Haraway’s strong attention to a changing South and a transforming America—but revelations like these could be portrayed with more subtlety. In other places, however, the author’s attention to detail and rhythm is quite effective. In “Lucy and the Early Men,” the narrator describes an article he wrote about an archaeological site on Native American land adjacent to the U.S.–Mexican border wall: “Just a bit of history that had helped me understand the wall. The age of bones. Finding the fishing gear and the boat evidence. A bunch of weapons.” Lines like these demonstrate Haraway’s developing mastery of the short story form and show that this book—and any subsequent works from the author—is worth a reader’s attention. Well-crafted contemporary tales with Southern protagonists.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942956-25-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lamar University Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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