A retelling of a well-known mystery that offers a few twists on the original.
A tour guide on the verge of retirement undergoes a haunting experience in this ghostly novel.
Raymond Smollet is giving his last tour of the Weatherlee Ghost House. He’s spent 30 years guiding visitors through the rambling home. Despite having lost his vision, he can still navigate the winding hallways and recite the rote stories. Smollet’s life is small and depressed; he lives alone with his cat and anticipates drinking himself to death after retirement. But his last tour of the Ghost House is an unexpected experience, as the blind man suddenly sees spirits everywhere. Sophia Weatherlee, the unbalanced heiress who insists on endless construction in the sprawling labyrinth of her home, appears in ballrooms and bedrooms. Her foreman, Chuck Ratowitz, struggles to respond to her unpredictable and constant demands while his personal life is falling apart. Smollet sees the house grow, witnesses a family dissolve, observes building disasters, and watches various servants and workers pass in and out of Sophia’s realm. It’s a horror story and a tragedy, with elements of romance and fantasy mixed in. This novel by Bishop and Fuller (co-authors: Galahad’s Fool, 2018, etc.) draws heavily from the chronicles of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, but employs different names and adds some backstory. Many of the details about the mansion, like removable floor panels, and the family, such as the death of Sophia’s daughter from marasmus, are pulled directly from the Winchester story. Smollet is whiny and condescending, an unlikable man who tends to expostulate too long on his sorry existence. His part of the tale feels unnecessary, as it’s the house, with its ghostly inhabitants, that is the true focus. The narrative surrounding Chuck and his wife and the subsequent unraveling of their lives is well written and engaging. Though the Winchester House did have a foreman who worked on the construction for 38 years, Chuck’s personal life and backstory are pleasant and unique contributions by the authors.
A retelling of a well-known mystery that offers a few twists on the original.Pub Date: June 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9997287-2-7
Page Count: 226
Publisher: WordWorkers Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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