Over-the-top complications sometimes get in the way of Lee’s wry commentary on contemporary life.
Lee (Country of Origin, 2004, etc.) whimsically examines the intertwining of some rather fey lives over a Labor Day weekend in a small California community.
The title is both apposite and ironic, for Lyndon Song’s life seems to be heading south. Living in Rosarita Bay, Lyndon is a refugee from his former life as a successful sculptor in New York City. He has now opted for a more Arcadian lifestyle as a Brussels sprout farmer—and on the side he grows an impressive crop of marijuana. Family matters also grow thick when Lyndon’s brother Woody decides to visit. Woody is a formerly hot movie producer whose specialty is taking Asian action movies and “translating” them into English, but his recent projects have been derailed. The brothers haven’t seen one another for 16 years, and Lyndon would be perfectly happy to keep Woody away for another 16. Lee tries to harmonize multiple strands of the narrative, as Woody tries to lure Yi Ling Ling, an aging and out-of-control kung-fu actress, into his project. Meanwhile, Lyndon continues to fight off two powerful forces, both economic (a powerful developer wants his farm) and personal (Lyndon’s former lover, the current mayor of Rosarita Bay, is angry with him and keeps slashing his tires). Lyndon finds himself attracted to Laura Díaz-McClatchey, a masseuse who eases his tense muscles, but who also, we find out later, is a former museum curator interested in his work. Lyndon would like to keep his life intact, for it’s at least pleasant if not perfect, but over the weekend everything threatens to spin out of control (see title); an anarchic energy emerges that infects and unites both Lyndon and Woody. Subplots propagate like bunnies, as Woody tries to track down why an old acquaintance committed suicide. (Woody also gets involved with two lesbian environmentalists studying snowy plovers.)
Over-the-top complications sometimes get in the way of Lee’s wry commentary on contemporary life.Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06232-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
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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