A melodramatic coming-of-age story with an offensive protagonist.
In actor, producer, and screenwriter Barnes’ debut novel, an aspiring young writer is seduced by Hollywood society life.
Conrad Arlington, a self-described “Last True Artist,” leaves his provincial hometown to move to Los Angeles and pursue his dream of becoming a writer. Later, he meets Gracie Garrison, a seasoned Hollywood socialite, with whom he immediately falls in love. Thus begins Conrad’s descent into what he calls “the great sickness,” as he finds himself helplessly trailing after the elusive Gracie to high-profile cocktail parties, iconic hotel bars, and lusty nightclubs along Hollywood Boulevard and beyond. In doing so, Conrad alternates between railing against himself for caving to his own foolishness and railing against Gracie for her superficiality, her secretiveness, and, most of all, the extent to which he’s crazy about her, in spite of it all. The longer he trails after her, the more determined he becomes to know her secrets, so Conrad tears through LA, drinking heavily, mining Gracie’s acquaintances for answers, and destroying relationships. These obsessional benders are interspersed with periods of forced isolation in which Conrad tries to reckon with his behavior and salvage his creative life. This novel gives readers a mildly intriguing behind-the-scenes peek at the glamorous, corrupting party culture of the Hollywood Hills. The tension between Conrad’s creative ambitions and the way in which love causes him to abandon them is what drives the novel. However, the curiosity that this tension will rouse in the reader is tepid, at best, as the narrator has an unrelenting penchant for arrogance, melodrama, and misogyny. His Hollywood is a sexist, clichéd dystopia in which women exist to accessorize male executives who pass the time draining decanters of scotch and scamming bright-eyed young creatives. Further, the prose is often hyperbolic (“I wanted to kiss her everywhere! Her eyelids! Her nose! Her cheeks! Her mouth! I wanted to see her fully, all golden and silver in the pressing darkness!”). For all the credit that Conrad gives himself for being “The Last True Artist,” he has a surprising lack of awareness of the inanity of his perceptions.
A melodramatic coming-of-age story with an offensive protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9991610-1-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Magic Hour Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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