An ambitious debut novel that powerfully, if schematically, addresses the conditions of those living in the great racial no- man's-land—that is to say, the children of mixed marriage—who belong to both races but are often also rejected by both. The author, a young Boston-raised writer, is herself the product of a mixed marriage, which gives her first fiction an authenticity that compensates for a plot that's often more a series of instructive set-pieces than a seamless narrative. Set in the late 1970s and early '80s, the story takes place against the rise and decline of black power, as well as against radical activism, both of which are vividly detailed and form part of the subplot. Birdie, the narrator, is the younger daughter of Sandy, a Boston WASP, and black intellectual and Harvard-educated Deck. The two fell in love, married, and were soon the parents of two daughters: black Cole and ``white'' Birdie. Both Sandy and Deck were involved in antigovernment political movements, but Sandy increasingly became the more radical of the two. Birdie recalls how, as she and Cole grew older, the hurts and difficulties of being neither black nor white accumulated: Cole was taunted for being white at her Afrocentric school, while the sisters' white grandmother favored Birdie at Cole's expense. And when their parents separated, and Deck went off to Brazil in search of a color-blind society, he took Cole with him. Left behind with her mother, Birdie describes the lonely years spent with Sandy on the run from the FBI. She also recollects her schooldays with bigoted New Hampshire whites and how, as a teenager, she finally escaped from Sandy and found a bittersweet reunion with Deck and Cole. An accomplished novel of issues that doesn't offer any easy solutions but does poignantly evoke the pain and paradox of those caught in the racial crossfire. (Book-of-the-Month Club Selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-57322-091-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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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