From the author of Playing with Fire (1990) and Fugitive Blue (1992): another gloomy tale of upper-class guilt and betrayal, this featuring a psychoanalyst who longs to reunite with the son he lost more than 30 years ago. Solomon Grossman never felt so lucky as on his wedding night with wealthy Ruth Lenski, the cosseted only child of Manhattan's first Jewish district attorney. Inspired to propose by a sort of existential recklessness he feels as a Holocaust survivor, the fledgling psychoanalyst's in-laws reward him with an elegant brownstone that includes a private office for his practice. The marriage soon starts to crumble, though, as Ruthie insists on getting pregnant despite Solomon's pleas of poverty; later, her passion for baby Daniel precludes any affection for Solomon. The dutiful doctor retreats to his office, where trouble soon arrives in the form of Katrina Volk, a new patient and gifted photographer who reveals that her father was a powerful member of the Nazi regime. Katrina proceeds to lure Solomon into a night of S&M sex; and when Solomon ends their relationship, she goes public with the incident. Scandalized Ruthie runs home to Daddy with Daniel in her arms, and decades pass before Solomon, now 64, can bring himself to face his grown son and try to make amends. By now, of course, Daniel has his own problems: His wife and daughter have left him, and his mother has recently died. Still, he's excited by the appearance of a father long believed dead, and the two men are just getting to know each other when Solomon drops dead of a heart attack. The 30-page epilogue, in which Solomon's spirit ensures that Daniel will not lose his family as Solomon lost his, provides a disappointingly paranormal end to this otherwise compelling story, throwing the reader out of sympathy with the characters and rendering the entire tale less believable. A flawed novel, then—though, as always, Shapiro's gift for evoking the darker emotions is clear and strong.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47263-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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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