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
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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