These stories about remarkable women deliver an elegant blend of history and art.
A collection of novellas offers three tales drawn from the rich soil of Jewish history.
This book finds its origin in a handful of artifacts: a pair of letters from medieval Europe, a stone inscription from imperial Rome, and an assortment of papyri from ancient Egypt. These treasures bear traces of the lives of a trio of extraordinary women: a convert to Judaism forced to carry on after her husband’s death; a Jerusalemite captured and sent to Rome after the fall of the Great Temple; and an Egyptian slave who builds a family and a home with the Jewish priest who takes her as his bride. In this collection, Stock (In Place of Me, 2015, etc.) takes the stories—whose contours are merely hinted at in the artifacts themselves—and fleshes them out, extrapolating lives and worlds from ancient etchings on rock, paper, and parchment. For too long, the history of Jews (and gentiles, for that matter) has focused on men, and one of Stock’s goals in building out her tales is to give voices to the women whose lives made up so much of the rich tapestry of Judaism. As Senior Rabbi Stacy Friedman writes in her liner notes, these voices have been “long suppressed by the larger currents of history.” Stock’s excavation, then, is an extremely worthy project. But it’s clear her fascination with these tales is not only political; it is also imaginative, and she breathes life and energy into the narratives these artifacts imply (“The destruction of the Great Temple in Jerusalem flickered through her. Often when she closed her eyes some part of the horror would rise up, tilting crazily then turning in her mind, until she seemed to be seeing it all under water”). A skilled prose stylist, the author pulls off a delicate balancing act between the modern and the ancient; her rendering of these lives feels both contemporary and of their own time. The enterprise’s only weakness is its structure. Stock decides to set her stories in reverse chronological order, and the effect is a bit confusing: presumably, the culmination of these tales comes in the experiences of Jewish women today, so it’s a bit odd that the end of her collection leaves readers on an island in the Nile two and a half millennia ago.
These stories about remarkable women deliver an elegant blend of history and art.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60052-144-7
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Norfolk Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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