To the reader’s amusement, Henry discovers more about himself, the Bible and the ways of the world than he’d ever...
The Lord works in humorously mysterious ways in this Southern picaresque teaming a jaded car thief and a young, impressionable Bible salesman.
The wry, latest from Edgerton (Lunch at the Piccadilly, 2003, etc.), set in his native North Carolina, concerns the unlikely bond between a pair of disparate characters. Preston Clearwater, who looks vaguely like Clark Gable, is a slick criminal who has graduated from stealing 1,600 pairs of aviator sunglasses during World War II to participating in a car-theft ring run by a war buddy. Clearwater’s work requires an accomplice to drive the cars he steals. Providence provides him with a partner when he picks up a hitchhiker named Henry Dampier, a 20-year-old Bible salesman who is very gullible and naive though not necessarily stupid. Henry has a scam of his own, sending away for free Bibles from missionary organizations and then selling them door to door. Raised by a pious aunt and a more fun-loving uncle after the freak accident that killed his father, Henry is trying to find his way in the world, looking to the Bible as a moral compass, though confused by the mixed messages it sends. Preston convinces Henry that the car thief is really an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a car-theft ring, and he offers Henry more money than he makes selling Bibles, while allowing him to sell Bibles on the side. Chapters alternate between ones titled “Exodus” (Preston and Henry on the road in the early 1950s) and “Genesis” (Henry’s early years of the 1930s), in that order, before culminating in “Revelation.” Along the way, there is a little sex (which complicates relationships) and a little violence (which leads to discovery). Yet plot is secondary to character, with most of the humor deriving from the contrasts between the partners whom fate has brought together.
To the reader’s amusement, Henry discovers more about himself, the Bible and the ways of the world than he’d ever anticipated.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-316-11751-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
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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