More entertainment than history, but all the better for it.
A wish-fulfillment fantasy about another Romanov who survived Ekaterinburg, this time the Tsar’s second daughter, Tatiana.
Forensic science has squelched speculation about whether or not any of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra’s five children escaped assassination by Bolsheviks in 1918. Erickson, who has carved out a niche in the historical genre for what she styles “historical entertainments” (e.g. The Secret Life of Josephine, 2007, etc.), never lets harsh fact impede a good story. Instead of the usual suspect, Anastasia, Erickson’s surviving Grand Duchess is Tatiana (aka Tania), now 93, living in obscurity in the West under the assumed name Daria Gradov. Tania has resolved to tell the world that the Romanov line did not die out. Flashback to pre–World War I St. Petersburg. The increasingly neurasthenic Alexandra has finally produced a male heir, but unfortunately, Tsarevich Alexei is born with hereditary hemophilia. Tania, at first preoccupied with typical princess concerns—French lessons, dancing instruction, ball gowns and draconian posture improvement administered by her overbearing Grandma Minnie—senses that her father’s throne is threatened. An attempt on Nicholas’s life sparked a major riot and Cossack rampage, and her Uncle Gega was blown to bits by a carriage bomb. As war approaches, Alexandra, when she’s not outraging the public with her German nationality and affinity for the rakish faith healer Rasputin, does her patriotic duty. Tania, meanwhile, toils tending wounded soldiers, like young Georgian Michael, whom she cures with Rasputin’s healing stick. Michael, with his Adonis-like physique (except for that nasty chest wound), is this romance’s Fabio. After exchanging identities with servant Daria, who then dies alongside her employers, Tania flees to Canada with Michael. Although the particulars of the Romanovs’ fall are familiar from other treatments, including Erickson’s biography of Alexandra, the suspense never flags, despite many improbabilities.
More entertainment than history, but all the better for it.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36738-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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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