In a kind of Parisian Evelyn Waugh with sex, de Rhodes manages to create a Gallic universe of Bright Young Things set loose...
In a madcap romp through the back alleys of Paris, de Rhodes (pen name of Dan Rhodes: Timoleon Vieta Come Home, 2003, etc.) introduces us to a slacker bohemian who may have killed Princess Diana.
Veronique is a 22-year-old photographer trying to make it as an artist while living in the suburbs and working at a boring office full of commuting zombies. Her insufferable boyfriend, Jean-Pierre, writes film reviews for an obscure magazine and composes experimental music so bad that even Veronique won’t listen to it. The day after Veronique finally worked up the nerve to throw Jean-Pierre over, she wakes up late to learn that the Princess of Wales has died in a car crash in the Pont d’Alma—and that the white Fiat that Veronique drove home from Jean-Pierre’s has a smashed-up hood. Observers recalled seeing a mysterious white Fiat cut in front of the Princess’s limousine just before the crash, and Veronique’s last conscious memory of the night before was driving her Fiat slowly and deliberately into the Pont d’Alma on her way home. Did she kill the Princess of Wales! Veronique keeps a cool head and calls her best friend, Estelle, who advises her to break into Jean-Pierre’s apartment and steal his stereo so she can sell it and get money to repair the car before the gendarmes come calling. Veronique makes arrangements. By the time she has the money, though, every auto-shop in France has been warned about smashed-up white Fiats, so Veronique sleeps with the would-be mechanic and tells him to forget she ever called. Jean-Pierre turns out to be quite understanding about his stereo, so she sleeps with him, too. This may be her best move, because he turns out to know some East European sculptors who specialize in car art.
In a kind of Parisian Evelyn Waugh with sex, de Rhodes manages to create a Gallic universe of Bright Young Things set loose upon the world. Vive la différence!Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2004
ISBN: 1-84195-289-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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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