They don’t write melodramas like this any more. A posthumous humdinger from Cookson (Kate Hannigan’s Girl, 2001, etc.).
Sweet young Irene Forrester sang operetta to earn her modest living—until she met Edward Mortimer Baindor, the temperamental son of a wealthy businessman.
Jilted by her first lover, Irene meekly agrees to marry Edward. He’s rich, masterful, and 14 years her senior, but he can take better care of her than a younger man might, or so says the Baindor family solicitor. Irene bears him a son, but Edward allows her little time with the boy. To all appearances, Edward is a pillar of respectability, but behind closed doors he’s a sadist who ties and flogs his wife, then bites her flesh before raping her. Unable to bear his abuse, Irene plans escape when a childhood friend, now a young man, comes to her dressing room—and Edward bursts in and assumes the worst. He beats them both mercilessly, sues for custody of his son, and consigns Irene to an asylum. Unhinged, she nonetheless gets free and is rescued by Bella Morgan, a loquacious Liverpudlian who, with Geordie Joe, a giant of a man, and Pimple Face, runs a fruit stall in front of a house her former employer left her. Although Irene communicates chiefly in gestures, Bella understands that she wants to create a kip house for men able to pay a shilling or two and help out when needed. World War II raids bring many in need of shelter—how to feed and house them all? A secret stash of money is discovered (apparently Bella’s former employer was a diamond smuggler), and happy years pass until a minor mishap lands Pimple Face in hospital and his doctor is—Richard Baindor! Irene swoons on hearing her son's name, and the truth is revealed at last. Aghast at his mother’s fragility (she’s near death), Richard at last confronts his monstrous father, now a peer and a multimillionaire. . . .
They don’t write melodramas like this any more. A posthumous humdinger from Cookson (Kate Hannigan’s Girl, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-2761-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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