A promising tale of an ex-soldier, hampered by a meandering, implausible plot.
In Mitchell’s debut novel, an American Vietnam veteran recovers from severe injuries and wrestles with memories of war.
After his mother dies in an automobile accident, Kelly O’Brian enlists in the Army and serves as a first lieutenant in the infantry in a treacherous stretch of wilderness, the Ho Bo Woods of Vietnam. In May 1969, he’s badly wounded, and after an extended convalescence in Japan, he returns to the United States and pursues a college degree in Florida. Kelly manages to build a life with all the trappings of success and happiness; he eventually heads a multibillion-dollar construction company, marries a woman he deeply loves, and raises a beautiful daughter. Nevertheless, he’s haunted by the trauma that he experienced during the war, and by the “sleeping devils inside of him” that are sometimes awakened when he faces danger. The latter happens with implausible frequency in Mitchell’s novel. While overseeing the construction of a highway through the Panamanian jungle, for example, Kelly is forced to contend with armed bandits; later, he kills a man who’s assaulting a woman and thwarts a terrorist takeover of a commercial plane. The heart of the story, though, is the protagonist’s search for emotional resolution. After a tragedy, he can no longer postpone his need for closure; he experiences a dramatic longing that takes him back to the beginning of his trials—the Ho Bo Woods. The author impressively brings to life the macabre horror of war, and his depictions of frenzied combat have an unalloyed feeling of realism. However, the overall plot isn’t as believable as these scenes are, and what begins as an intriguing psychological drama eventually degrades into a clichéd tale of action and adventure. Also, Mitchell’s prose, and particularly the dialogue, can feel inauthentic and overwritten. For example, when Kelly first asks out his future wife, Cindy, she stiltedly tells him, “Kelly, you seem like a really nice guy. You’re courteous, and you speak well. Even with that dueling scar on your cheek you’re rather handsome.”
A promising tale of an ex-soldier, hampered by a meandering, implausible plot.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63415-444-4
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Coleman Mitchell Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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