by Christopher Leibig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 2018
Proof that a legal case can be riveting long after the trial is over.
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An attorney offers a confession of sorts to a Manhattan socialite concerning a murder trial in which he was the teen defendant in this mystery/drama.
At his regular drinking hole, lawyer David Stillman has a chance encounter with Michaela Fitzgerald. The socialite is worried she may soon go to jail for a probation violation, having served a few years in prison for her involvement in a drug case. But then David starts divulging details about his startling past to Michaela after she notes his apparent melancholy. Fifteen years ago, when David was 15, he and his friend Barney Jenson were on trial for murder. The boys, along with peers Carl and Teddy, were unmitigated delinquents, primarily immersed in vandalism. While they couldn’t always evade the law, they were successful enough in their criminal endeavors to be known around town as hellions. As David inches his tale toward the murder that prompted his and Barney’s arrests, he also tells Michaela of his recent client, Tracey Chisholm. Her case parallels David’s own—15-year-old Tracey faces a murder charge. But what really shakes David is the prosecutor in Tracey’s case, Trotter Daniels, the same lawyer who tried convicting him and Barney of murder. Completing his confession to Michaela will lead to a revelation, but not necessarily one David may anticipate. Despite knowing some of the trials’ outcomes (David clearly isn’t in prison), Leibig’s (Almost Mortal, 2016, etc.) lucid novel is rife with mystery. For one, David’s chronological flashback doesn’t reach the murder for some time, while the result of Tracey’s trial is likewise not immediately revealed. The engrossing, hard-edged story isn’t about mere teen mischief but rather youngsters on a dangerous path (“We were thirteen, really bored, and not scared enough”). Daniels even argues the teens’ acts were hate crimes, as a handful of victims were minorities. Leibig’s complex tale offers no easy answers: The justice system affects the boys, including Carl and Teddy, in different ways. Still, the ending delivers surprises (even for David) and a fair amount of resolution.
Proof that a legal case can be riveting long after the trial is over.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980335-25-2
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Trevaller's Playground Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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