As one character notes of Paul’s reporting, it’s “the best kind of mystery."
The discovery and disappearance of a young woman’s body upends the interconnected lives of the Hamptons’ residents.
Kozatch’s debut novel has the same intriguing elements that made Big Little Lies a propulsive page-turner and compulsively watchable miniseries—a glamorous setting, a dead body, and the deliberately paced reveal about how it got that way. Also included are characters up and down the cultural and financial spectrum whose lives are impacted by the tragedy. The story kicks off when a lone surfer makes a disturbing discovery on the beach: “It wasn’t a rich kid’s kite. It was a girl and she was dead.” Paul Sandis, a transplanted New York City journalist who now toils on a local paper, hears about the body on his police scanner. But when he arrives at the beach to investigate, he is told there is no body and that it was just a “drill.” The truth surfaces when Paul comes across a viral photo of the victim. Paul is in the process of finalizing his divorce from Jeanine, who is not only engaged, but pregnant. Other memorably drawn characters include Merika, a Shinnecock Indian who may have seen something on the beach; Butch, Jeanine’s fiance, a financially challenged real estate developer; Will Clifford, the officer who initially called in the body; Peter Draken, a law student from a privileged and controlling family; and Maria, the victim herself, whose story unfolds posthumously in intermittent chapters. All of the characters seem to have juicy secrets or carry the burden of past indiscretions. There’s illicit drug usage, infidelity, and bigotry. Kozatch maps out the tony territory (“Main Street was now dominated by luxury brand satellites that wanted to be able to advertise ‘East Hampton’ on the side of a drawstring shopping bag”) as well as “neighborhoods you were unlikely to find on tourist postcards.” He effectively doles out information that serves to flesh out the characters. Jeanine and Butch, for example, go way back (“They were…in high school again, all eyes in the cafeteria on them”).
As one character notes of Paul’s reporting, it’s “the best kind of mystery."Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987968-2-6
Page Count: 402
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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