Palahniuk is a cheerful nihilist with a mordant wit and a taste for scatological humor. Fair warning: some may find his...
The author of Fight Club (1996) takes as the hero of his fourth novel an unlovable loser who doesn’t blame Mom.
Victor Mancini always knew she was crazy, but he loves her all the same. Ida’s in a nursing home now, and Victor works two jobs to keep her there. The legit one involves donning breeches and wig to playact at Colonial Dunsboro, a fake 18th-century village. The other consists of pretending to choke in fancy restaurants, which nets him the sympathy of the saps who perform the Heimlich maneuver and then send checks, hoping to perpetuate the warm glow of their momentary heroism. In between choking spells, Victor listens patiently to Ida’s reminiscences of her days as a practicing anarchist, on the road with him when she wasn’t in jail and he wasn’t in foster care. His father? Victor doesn’t know, but he might find out from Ida’s diary—too bad it’s written in Italian. Victor, however, has other things to occupy his mind. There’s always the Internet and his favorite Website featuring photos of an obese man who bends over and lets a trained orangutan put chestnuts up his ass. Victor can protect his stupid slacker pal Denny, usually clapped in the stocks at Dunsboro, or help him lug home the enormous rocks he collects. When all else fails, Victor gets up close and personal with any willing, lust-besotted female from the 12-step sexaholic program he attends. But he does wonder now and then about his dad—until a doctor at the nursing home translates the diary and informs him that he was conceived from the DNA of a sacred relic: the putative foreskin of Jesus Christ. Hey, Victor doesn’t believe it either. Then, finally, his mother tells him the truth.
Palahniuk is a cheerful nihilist with a mordant wit and a taste for scatological humor. Fair warning: some may find his language and imagery offensive.Pub Date: May 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-50156-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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