Perfectly timed for the 2012 election, this book sets itself apart from most political thrillers with equal parts insight...
Having possibly cost his previous candidate an election, Henry Hatten thinks he's lucky to land a job as press secretary for presidential contender Tom Peele, a moderate Republican senator from Nebraska with Kennedy-esque looks and charm. But what Hatten has landed in is a world of trouble.
Great on issues, Peele is a disaster waiting to happen with his chronically compromised ethics and womanizing ways. That disaster takes the form of Elizabeth, an ill-fated Iowa State professor with whom both Peele and Henry have an affair. Henry, who thinks getting stuck in Iowa in the weeks leading up to its electoral caucus is a fate worse than death, revises his outlook when a politically motivated killing victimizes Elizabeth, and he becomes a prime suspect. Robbins, a former reporter who was Sen. Arlen Specter's communications director (he co-authored Specter's 2012 memoir, Life Among the Cannibals), deftly combines a lively insider's look at campaign politics with a satirically spiked murder story. He reveals how easy it is for even a principled candidate like Peele to compromise his values—not to mention the values he promoted playing teen idol Ranger Rick on the TV series Parkland—for political support. And we see how many opportunities he has to compromise his marriage. Robbins stocks his impressive first novel with great characters, including cutthroat campaign chair Gil Cass, aka "The Angel of Light...one of Satan's disguises," threatening union leader Ed Zabriskie and linebacker-sized security chief Mike Sterba. The narrative flows freely and easily, the dialogue crackles, and the comedy comfortably coexists with the drama.
Perfectly timed for the 2012 election, this book sets itself apart from most political thrillers with equal parts insight and imagination.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01051-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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