The latest generational novel by the author of Raney, etc., eschews his typical down-home high-jinks for a more serious tale of familial reconciliation. This chatty fiction, full of nuances in diction and demeanor, is also an elegy for a dying way of life in the rural South. Edgerton here gives voice to all sorts of regular folk who share a common interest in the fate of the Bales family farm in Summerlin, N.C. The many witnesses in the first half establish (and give their own view of) the events that have torn apart generations of Bales. Glen Bales, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman, is close to death and lost in memory alongside his equally ailing second wife, Laura. His first wife, Evelyn McCord, ran off shortly after their second son (Tate) was born. While Tate's older brother Falson has grown up a no-count ``failure'' with a nasty toothpick habit, Tate himself has become a successful college professor, after heroic service in Vietnam. But despite his career, Tate shares his brother's personal failures; divorce has alienated him from his son, Morgan, a long-haired punk-rocker with a love of computers and a hatred for the provinces. Meanwhile, Laura's daughter from her first marriage, a lawyer with a distaste for ``horrible country people,'' eagerly attends to the elderly couple, hoping to inherit the valuable farm if her stepfather dies first. All hell breaks loose, though, when Evelyn's redneck raconteur brother, Grove McCord, arrives with a crazy plan for his own burial—and colorful tales of bootlegging and carney huckstering. He also reveals the dark family secret—the real reason his sister ran away years ago. All of which leads to an emotionally satisfying resolution in a novel that demonstrates the truth of Grove's saying, ``You're history longer than you're fact.'' Still a master of the comic set-piece, Edgerton here avoids the sentimentality that often marred his earlier work. Good-hearted folk triumph in Edgerton's best novel yet.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-56512-010-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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