A quick read with likable characters and an affecting ending.
Zani (Piper, Once & Again, 2016) returns with an intricately crafted novel about starting over after suffering life-changing loss.
The narrative opens with an intriguing dialogue, occurring in 1991, between an unnamed plastic surgeon seeking legal advice, and a lawyer, identified only as “Cranston,” who refuses to take the doctor’s case because “We only take cases we can win.” Fast-forward to 2019, and Dr. Eli Cranston is in his barn feeding Ink and Smudge, two rescue ponies that he recently adopted. Is this the same Cranston? Indeed, it is. In 1991, Eli was a successful defense attorney working for his father’s law firm, one of the largest in California. He was married to a woman named Antigone and had a newborn daughter, Grace. Since then, readers learn, he’s become a doctor of psychotherapy specializing in “FLP” (“Future Life Progression,” a form of hypnotic therapy), and has moved to a small town in Maine. The principal people in Eli’s new life are Clem, a crusty but charming jack-of-all-trades who speaks with a heavy Maine accent (“Just give me the kinda terlet seat yah want”); Rebecca, who owns a farm and sells baked goods at the farmers market; Otto and Elise Gunther, survivors of Nazi Germany; and Hope, an 11-year-old with a drug-abusing mother and an abusive, heavy-drinking father; the girl takes care of Eli’s ponies. Zani’s engaging, descriptive narration is filled with powerful imagery, whether she’s describing a setting (“the sounds of the water beyond the trees could be heard here in the stillness. The bay quietly filling and emptying leaving the sand studded with clams”) or disclosing someone’s inner thoughts. Throughout, the author drops hints and uses periodic flashbacks—set during various stages of Grace’s early and teenage years—which make it clear that Eli is deeply troubled by something in his past that he’d rather not address. She skillfully weaves together what initially appear to be unrelated story threads and provides some surprising twists, as when Hope learns who her great-grandparents are, or when Eli finally overcomes his demons and his past comes roaring back, threatening to upend it all.
A quick read with likable characters and an affecting ending.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948018-71-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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