Inspired personal journeys that, even when traversing other worlds, stay grounded in the one readers know.
In this debut collection of short stories, characters experience spiritual awakenings through dreams and reminiscences.
An epiphany, it seems, can come about by simply remembering. Such is the case for the unnamed narrator of “Gravel and Fern,” who perceives his wife in an entirely different light only after she’s dead. Memory is often a catalyst in these tales, ultimately sparking Vietnamese soldier Steele’s religious turn in “Gold Leaf” or prefacing the shocking event that befalls Uccello, a baker recalling someone he’s lost, in “Dough.” Characters find insight in dreams as well, dream imagery that Frode generally augments with something more tangible. Nathan of “In the Darkness of the Dark Night,” for example, has a vision of falling stars that he later sees as helicopters—like an invading Army. Metaphors are unsubtle but never clumsily so, such as the serene “Levees,” in which a monk, Brother Paul, watching the flooding of orchards he tends, is flooded with recollections of lost loved ones. In the same vein, real-world elements that usually accompany the stories’ spirituality are both suitable and engrossing; in “Above the Tree Line,” an overnight backpacking trip up a mountain is just as therapeutic for the doctor as it is for the patient. There is, however, occasional repetition: “Spice,” in which Herbert’s beloved, memory-triggering spices are opposed by his hateful stepfather, Frank, is immediately followed by “Iridescence,” with Carl seriously contemplating killing his own abusive stepfather, Chet. Frode recurrently lingers on descriptive passages, as many characters lament the past, including Brother Clayton, who in “Clay Bodies” focuses on a pottery wheel, its precision reminding him of his days as a mathematics professor. The writing’s steeped in lyricism, regardless of content: sights at the farmers’ market in “Slow” entail “thin Botox women carrying Chihuahua dogs in their bared skeletal arms, an ultimate fighter type hazarding a leashed but prohibited pit bull through the crowd,” and so on. The book closes with “The Door Maker,” in which the dream-motivated title character tries to build a door to various dimensions. It’s a befitting conclusion, blurring the line between reality and mysticism.
Inspired personal journeys that, even when traversing other worlds, stay grounded in the one readers know.Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-312-54537-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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