Brown brings back the souped-up helicopters that were the technostars of Hammerhead (1990) for a supporting role in a near- future war between Lithuania and Belarus. That's Byelorussia to those still updating their old globes. Lithuania is the much more likable victim in a war that parallels Saddam Hussein's attack on tiny Kuwait. The villains here are a General Anton Voschanka, a Byelorussian who also heads all CIS (ex-USSR) forces in the neighborhood, and Viktor Gabovich, an especially nasty ex-KGB type who controls a supersecret aeronautical research center near the Lithuanian capital. Both these creeps hate the new commonwealth, loathe the Lithuanians, and pine for the old world order. One of their chief irritants is General Dominikas Palcikas. Palcikas was a Soviet hero until he cast his lot with the renegade Baltic republic. Now he is head of the tiny Lithuanian defense forces. Tough, charismatic, and just a touch fascist (but not in the least Nazi), Palcikas has heard the sabers rattling across the border, and he's whipping his forces into shape for war. But the Byelorussians are armed with nuclear weapons and outnumber the Balts a zillion to one. America's post- Bush president wants to help when the invasion starts, but he doesn't want to get dragged into war. He is forced to reach for the mad genius of the Air Force, General Brad Elliott, who has a plan that will save Lithuania and, at the same time, rescue one of the heroes of a previous Brown novel (Flight of the Old Dog, 1986) who's been brainwashed by the KGB into believing he's a Soviet plane designer and has been chemically induced to design the first Russian Stealth bomber. Elliott and his troops make good use of those handy new helicopter-cum-fixed-wing planes that float like butterflies and sting like bees. Longer than Desert Storm—but with much more satisfactory results.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-13739-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
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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