Lovers of romantic intrigue among the royals be warned: This flighty tale of one simple-minded child of privileged descent—by the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, sister of Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg, and author of an equally frivolous collection of anecdotes, Taxi (1986)—is highly unlikely to spur fantasies of life in a more gracious universe. Maria Moses—18, attractive, the daughter of dispossessed (Yugoslavian) royalty on her mother's side and East Hampton wealth on her father's—might seem in a position to take New York by storm as she moves to that city from London, where she was raised. Sadly, though, she has only a small allowance from her father and finds that with no ability to type, spell, or even converse intelligently it's hard to pay her rent. But Maria's appalling ignorance is hardly her own fault: Her beautiful mother's lifelong obsession with romantic escapades, New Age nonsense, and alien visitations left little room for the proper care of her daughter. When little Maria dared grieve over the death of her best friend, she was thrown into a home for emotionally ill children. Tortured at the home by a vicious fellow student, left uneducated and vaguely traumatized, Maria, who's actually forced to squat in the Park Avenue guest rooms of increasingly resentful wealthy friends, is an easy target for the first con man who happens along. He appears in the form of her parents' archenemy—the married, middle-aged Tino Brooks, who deftly seduces Maria, then manipulates her into helping him transfer a valuable Scottish castle of her mother's over to him. Maria's actions destroy not only her mother's only chance at financial solvency, but—Maria realizes belatedly—her own as well. Oxenberg's heroine is so thick-headed, and her social set so unpleasant, that even the author's lightly ironic tone can't salvage this debut. Readers will drift off early, grateful for lives lived far from the haunts of the rich and famous.
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-80093-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
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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