Troubled romance that knows the messiness of real life.
Hawkins’ (Dance for a Dead Princess, 2013) tale of addictive love is a roller coaster of emotion.
Jumping between the past and present, Hawkins spins the story of Karen Moon and her ill-advised love, Stan Benedict. Their relationship begins in 1994. Karen is a talented attorney who works all the time, though she hates her job at a top law firm in San Diego. Stan is a jazz musician who manages to catch Karen’s eye, distract her from work, and inadvertently win her heart. Stan repeatedly warns Karen he’s bad for her, a supposition his actions only support. Karen—who now, based on Stan’s recommendation, once again goes by Carrie Moon—is convinced her love can change him, and she doggedly pursues Stan in an attempt to prove he is worthy of love. Ultimately, their relationship ends in tragedy, and Stan leaves her in horrific fashion. More than a decade later, Carrie is now the Honorable Judge Karen Morgan. Though she’s married to a successful trial attorney and surrounded by tangible signs of their wealth and success, she is dreadfully unhappy. Her marriage resembles a corporate merger, her job fails to satisfy her, she still misses music, and she can’t seem to get over Stan. When Stan suddenly reappears in her life, Karen finds herself reliving their past and considering a future together. Hawkins presents a study of love’s all-consuming power, both good and bad. While it opens Carrie up to new possibilities, it often blinds her to the true nature of Stan’s personality. Hawkins does an admirable job painting Stan as a likable jerk. He’s the selfish liar, philanderer, and gambler you want to succeed. Alternately, Karen is beautiful, smart, driven, and incredibly understanding; the couple is such a stark contrast that it tests the bounds of believability to imagine them together. Hawkins’ intriguing descriptions of the emotion underlying Stan’s music provide a window into his troubled soul. Meanwhile, Karen’s own journey of self-discovery is equally if not more compelling. The transition from Carrie to Karen (and perhaps back again) is relatable and honest.
Troubled romance that knows the messiness of real life.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988934733
Page Count: 415
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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