Not a false note anywhere in a story that’s as entertaining as it is wise. Anshaw just keeps getting better.
A tender comedy of contemporary manners from Anshaw (Aquamarine, 1992, etc.), centered on a mother and daughter who love each other but can’t quite connect.
Fern has never really forgiven Nora for coming out as a lesbian and taking Fern away from her father to live in a series of ramshackle apartments with a transient population of overnight girlfriends. Though Fern’s now in college and Nora has settled down with calm, domestic (albeit slightly controlling) Jeanne, she still fears that her mother will pull another disappearing act. Spending time with her wild friend Tracy, who refuses to discuss the paternity of infant son Vaughn, Fern can see how hard it is to be a young woman thrust unexpectedly into motherhood (as Nora was). Fern tends to Vaughn with more patience and purpose than Tracy can muster, but she still relates to Nora like a sullen teenager. Anshaw delineates their touchy exchanges in pitch-perfect, ruefully funny dialogue, and she surrounds them with a wonderfully vivid cast of supporting characters: Nora’s cross-dressing (but straight) brother Harold, with whom Fern is close; the judgmental administrative assistant at the adult-education program Nora heads; Fern’s new slacker boyfriend James (who could be Vaughn’s father); Pam, the very butch contractor Nora is sneaking around with; and Lucky, Fern’s aging dog. The author skillfully moves in and out of various people’s heads, back and forth in time, weaving a seamless narrative that gradually unfolds the characters’ motivations, past history, and gropings toward a more satisfying future. There won’t be a dry eye in the house when Lucky’s death moves Fern and Nora toward a more adult emotional relationship, even though the scene is as understated and subtle as every other element in Anshaw’s compassionate portrait of human frailty and resilience. The finale offers hope for almost everyone, but no easy promises of smooth sailing ahead.
Not a false note anywhere in a story that’s as entertaining as it is wise. Anshaw just keeps getting better.Pub Date: May 22, 2002
ISBN: 0-395-94040-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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