An often well-told, if occasionally puzzling, tale of a Semper Fi sisterhood.
In Kelly’s debut novel, four young women bond in the U.S. Marine Corps.
In 2001, Allyn Kend, who works at a Starbucks in Manhattan, enlists in the Marines. Her fiancé, Eliot Michaels, is already a lance corporal, and she wonders in what ways the corps will change her. At the Parris Island training installation in South Carolina, she meets fellow recruits, including wealthy Forsythia “Syth” Sangiorgio; Korean-American YeonBi “Bibi” Shim; and devoted Christian Jessica “Jezi” Kellerman. These new recruits, known as “turkey gobblers,” endure the break-’em-down, build-’em-up rigors of boot camp, determined to join the few and the proud. They must prove themselves physically and mentally fit as they gain expertise in rescue and rifles, survive on half-rations and learn to stand up for each other. After the Twin Towers fall on September 11, the significance of their commitment to military service deepens. Brusque superiors abound; one needles Allyn for her masculine-sounding name: “[A]re you really a boy sneaking in here to cuddle up with the ladies?” In brief, personal moments, the women reflect upon their love lives; Allyn is on track to wed Eliot but can’t forget her passion for the married Hector Archuleta. The novel pairs solid characterization with the authentic feel of military life, providing an inside look at daily rituals, military protocol and fledgling friendships among the Marines. Especially touching is the story of Lance Cpl. Jezi inspiring the privileged Cpl. Gabriel Lassiter to do the right thing. The dialogue is often fine, but the prose can be awkward: “Allyn’s wedding cake, I was determined, would crown her portfolio ready for the bigger and better.” Initially, the tale is undermined by its jumpy structure (providing, for example, two different characters’ points of view of the same conversation in separate sections), and it can be repetitive and confusing. The many-layered plot also touches on sex trafficking, pregnancy both in and out of wedlock, family dramas back home, moral dilemmas and suicide. However, the story’s focus strengthens toward the end.
An often well-told, if occasionally puzzling, tale of a Semper Fi sisterhood.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490420615
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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