A passionately written book that bodes well for the author’s future efforts.
In Wade’s debut historical novel, a young man gets caught up in the movement to outlaw slavery in the British Empire, eventually becoming a spy to uncover and report the behavior of slave owners.
In late-18th-century London, Perlman’s father, Mordecai, is a tailor who wants his son to follow the trade and lead an inconspicuous life. But when Lazarus meets the activist Thomas Clarkson, he knows that he’s found a worthy cause—the abolition of the British slave trade. Lazarus volunteers to sail to Barbados and expose the brutality of slave owners. This, he hopes, will put the lie to the propaganda of the planters’ lobby and force Parliament to finally outlaw the buying and selling of human beings. In Barbados, he sets himself up as a tailor and ingratiates himself with the sugar cane plantation owners, the aristocracy of the island. They’re a hatefully brutal bunch—racist, arrogant, entitled, and gratuitously cruel. The slaves, however, are unfailingly kind and helpful to the young idealist. The leader of the planters’ society, Lord Harrington, is especially vicious, raping slave girls and mutilating any other slaves who cross him. Lazarus reports Harrington’s evil deeds to the Anti-Slavery Society, but his cover is blown and he must flee for his life. Wade’s debut novel is remarkably graceful and thoughtful. Not only is this an extended examination of the evils of slavery—Britain abolished the sale of slaves in 1807 and the owning of slaves in 1833—but it’s also a bildungsroman of Lazarus Perlman. At the end, the protagonist is shown to be unsure if he’s done very much good—a humility that speaks well of him, because we, as readers, know that he has. Barely out of his teens, he shows himself to be a formidable fighter for humanity who would have made his father proud. Overall, the book effectively speaks against intolerance and cruelty that persist to the present day.
A passionately written book that bodes well for the author’s future efforts.Pub Date: June 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9856376-0-6
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
