After a slow-moving start, the action accelerates during the war sections, but Steel’s tin ear and simplistic prose, even...
Manhattan heiress, wrongfully shunned as an adulteress, becomes a medic in the Great War, then a Paris physician, confounding all her detractors, in this cliché-riddled, exposition-bound umpteenth from Steel (Rogue, 2008, etc.).
Annabelle Worthington, born to a prominent banking family, enjoys an idyllic childhood, until the fateful night when her father and brother go down with the Titanic. Annabelle’s mother, Consuelo, worries that the yearlong mourning period might scuttle 19-year-old Annabelle’s marriage chances. So Consuelo and confirmed bachelor Josiah, age 38, agree that he will marry Annabelle. After a lavish wedding at the Worthington’s Newport estate, Annabelle, who’s fond of Josiah, doesn’t question his wedding night reluctance to consummate their marriage. But when abstinence drags on for two years, amid Consuelo’s anxious queries about grandchildren, Josiah admits that he’s homosexual. When the divorce, citing trumped-up charges of adultery, hits the tabloids, her New York friends, including the miserably married Hortie, ostracize Annabelle. Her mother has died, and now Annabelle, sole heir to her family fortune, can pursue her lifelong interest in medicine. She heads for France to aid the war effort in a field hospital, and after beginning medical school in Nice as the only female student, serves as a medic and ambulance driver. Raped by a drunken British officer, viscount Winshire, she’s horrified to find herself pregnant. The viscount is killed, and Annabelle gives birth to a beautiful daughter, whom she names Consuelo. At war’s end, Annabelle opens a practice in Paris. Smitten, handsome surgeon Antoine welcomes her and Consuelo II to his family, then viciously turns on Annabelle when she reveals her past. But Lady Winshire, the rapist’s mother, is enthralled with her grandchild, whom she legitimizes. She urges Annabelle to ignore the scandalmongers. Now fortified by two family fortunes, mother and daughter head back to New York to reclaim their place in society.
After a slow-moving start, the action accelerates during the war sections, but Steel’s tin ear and simplistic prose, even more than the predictable plot, make for a leaden tale.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-34026-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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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