Gilb’s prose sometimes requires a glossary of the nonbilingual (or -trilingual), as with sentences such as, “Los blacks...
It’s ten o’clock, mom’s in her chones, and all’s wrong with the world.
Mexican American novelist and essayist Gilb (Gritos, 2003, etc.) sets this novel, an understated exploration of race and its discontents, in a grimy border city in the recent past; the time is never spelled out and the cars and cholo clothes are timeless, but since “some cops pulled this loco black man over and he got whipped on, [and] it went out onto all the streets,” it’s safe to put it around 1994. As the reader soon sees, the mood is ugly. Sonny Bravo is a smart 15-year-old kid who wants to be good and has a hurting soul, but events are conspiring against him as surely as they conspire against Johnny Cade in The Outsiders—a kindred book in many ways. Sonny’s vivacious, semi-clad mother decides to improve her fortunes by marrying an Anglo building contractor, and off they go to an apartment complex called Las Flores, the flowers of the title. It’s no improvement; the mean streets get no less mean for Sonny, who now has black and white neighbors to contend with. His stepfather takes to drinking with a redneck construction worker named Bud, who lets no opportunity for stereotype or slur go unexplored, while mom endures. Sonny wanders between cultures, adding high-school French (“J’aime beaucoup les hamburgers”) to the mix, uncomfortable inside his own skin. It’s a recipe for a bruising, and it’s up to Sonny to keep that skin in one piece while steering clear of trouble and wishing for a world in which everyone would just get along.
Gilb’s prose sometimes requires a glossary of the nonbilingual (or -trilingual), as with sentences such as, “Los blacks aren’t shorty indios como nuestra gente,” and his narrative moves toward a resolution that, like the world, leaves all sorts of loose ends hanging.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1859-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
