Emotional, open-minded and vital.
This novel explores faith, gay issues and standing up for what’s right.
Tammy is the wife of Ed Sloan, a prominent figure in the Texas political scene who is struggling over the fallout of the bullying of gay student Jamie O’Dell, which involved the Sloans’ son, Michael. The issue sends shockwaves through the lives of Ed and his colleagues, friends and family, especially Tammy, who begins to consider gay rights from a new angle. Farrar follows Tammy’s journey as the once-dutiful wife and mother opens her heart to Jamie’s mother, Marcie; from there, she visits a PFLAG meeting, volunteers with the Trevor Project helping at-risk gay youth, and begins to stand up against her husband’s anti-gay views, both at home and in public. While the book admirably shows the far-reaching effects of homophobia, the characters sometimes feel like mouthpieces for Farrar’s well-intentioned political and religious agendas. Dialogue is sometimes stilted, and the characters can feel slightly one note; for instance, Farrar writes of Michael: “It was all about building social capital in high school. Like so many other teens, he had gone along with peer pressure to maintain his popularity.” But despite the occasionally stiff writing, the book commendably brings gay issues home and depicts the mental and emotional work people must do to change their views. The story is rooted in faith from a range of perspectives, showing how Christian faith can both harden and open peoples’ hearts—a refreshing take on the hot topic. Endnotes throughout the text and a list of LGBT resources shine a light on the book for the educational project it ultimately is. But Farrar’s open-hearted willingness to be gentle to her characters is sure to make the book appealing to a broad audience, especially to people of faith struggling to understand the intersection between LGBT issues and their beliefs.
Emotional, open-minded and vital.Pub Date: March 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491871232
Page Count: 422
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
