A supermom with a fearsome past must relive it or lose all she holds dear—in a moody, symbol-ridden melodrama (and first hardcover) from Mills. At 34, Wren Cameron, a science teacher in a suburban San Antonio school, is happily married with two children. Although seemingly without a problem worse than a rebellious 15-year-old son, Daniel, her picture-perfect life is shattered by the unexpected reappearance of Jeremiah Hunter, the charismatic militia chieftain who had lured her from SMU 16 years earlier. Then known as Elizabeth (Lissie) Montgomery, Wren escaped her Svengali when the FBI mounted a bloody raid on his encampment in Louisiana. Older and wiser (though still a federal fugitive herself), Wren refuses the magnetic parolee's invitation to rejoin his movement. In short order, Hunter kidnaps Wren and Daniel, transporting them to a remote base in the west Texas wilderness, where he and his so- called Armageddon Army prepare violent strikes against government and society. Self-indulgence apart, the cult's leader wants Wren (and her explosives expertise) for an assault on Buck Leatherwood, a wealthy industrialist and vocal advocate of stricter gun-control laws. After one harrowing failure to break away, Wren (disturbed by the realization that Daniel is beginning to respect his macho abductor) draws spiritual strength from her Cherokee heritage and ostensibly submits to Hunter's will. But she sabotages the bombs meant to kill Leatherwood in his Midland office, and a concurrent bank robbery goes wrong as well. With Daniel as hostage, Hunter flees the scene in cowardly haste, and only Wren knows where they might be holed up. Before she can return her son to the family he now prizes, Wren must play the role of an avenging angel. A Texas tall-tale complete with trendy exemplars, including a gutsy heroine who sets great store by animist vision quests, which adds an arresting new dimension to the concept of mother love.
Pub Date: May 19, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94202-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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