A complex and frequently portentous novel about the lingering aftermath of the Holocaust, from German author Ransmayr (The Terrors of Ice and Darkness, 1991, etc.). The primary setting is Moor, a lakeside village renowned for its nearby stone quarry, and notorious as the site of a former concentration camp. Immediately following the defeat of Hitler's European armies, Moor is occupied by American forces and its citizens are ordered to participate in pageant-like ``parties'' memorializing the sufferings of the Jews who died there. Ransmayr focuses attention on three variously affected survivors and victims of these occurrences and ceremonies: Bering, the blacksmith's son, is born during a bombing raid and traumatized for years afterward, suffering a variety of physical disabilities. Ambras (``the Brazilian'') has emerged from the camps to be appointed ``quarry administrator'' and in effect rules—as ``King of the Dogs''—over a landscape blighted by packs of roving animals and equally feral humans. And Lily, an Austrian refugee who lives alone in an abandoned water tower, turns a cache of hidden weapons she's discovered into a thriving barter business. The intricate relationships that bind these three together reach a crisis point when the quarry is exhausted and a new occupying army precipitates their exile, setting into motion the fate for which they've long been destined. This is a relentlessly dense novel characterized by highly charged language (which comes through powerfully in Woods's splendid translation) and oppressive symbolism (for example, Bering's distorted vision provokes this prognosis: ``For the rest of your life. . . you'll see the world as if through blackened glass''). The blurring of historical fact and dreamlike fiction, along with the hortatory emphases, add both confusion and mystery to Ransmayr's apparent point: that neither victims nor those who ``didn't know'' will escape the consequences of the evil that was done. Not the masterpiece it obviously aims to be, but a fascinating and provocative fiction nevertheless.
Pub Date: April 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-45057-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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