Spookers are the rainy-day funds that intelligence agents amass against the time when they must decampwhereon hangs a flimsy tale from Ing (Butcher Bird, 1993, etc.). Although slow on the uptake, the CIA eventually realizes that ever since the late '60s freelance mercenaries have been offing undercover operatives (foreign as well as domestic) for their getaway money. The first victim seems to have been Skander Roman Masaryk, a Czech engineer raised in Canada during WW II, who was kidnapped and presumably beaten to death in 1968. The disappearances continue, but leads are in short supply and the case file builds until 1993, when investigators catch a much-needed break. At that time, the anonymous assassins go after Gary Landis, a Fresno-based DEA man. Panicked by a cryptic note and a hail of bullets, Landis bolts—but before he can clear his garage, he's grabbed, drugged, and left for dead at the bottom of a mine shaft with two other bodies. By some unexplained miracle, the young fed doesn't succumb and starts tracking his would-be killers. It soon becomes clear that another survivor, the not-dead defector Masaryk (in fact, a gender-jumbled freak able to live as a woman), and Andrew Soriano, his/her adoptive son, are the culprits. From the privileged sanctuary of a high-tech residential complex on the Yomo Indian reservation, this strange pair has been preying on targets of opportunity in the West Coast's intelligence community for over two decades. As Landis stalks the erstwhile hunters, they reveal themselves to be exceptionally nasty pieces of work. Soriano, for example, performs unspeakable acts upon the bodies of small furry animals, finally does in his domineering mom (Masaryk), and engineers a climactically degrading confrontation with Landis that ends badly for all hands. A second-rate thriller with little pace or suspense, albeit an abundance of loose ends and shock-value details.
Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85740-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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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