Move five in Miss Dunnett's popular adventures of that 16th century Bond/Lord Peter Wimsey — Francis Crawford of Lymond and one would chance a guess the author is not castling for an end game. The King, one step removed, is the Tsar of Russia, Ivan Vasilievich, whom Lymond serves as a mercenary with his band of fighting Scots. But Philippa, Lymond's bride in name only, has returned from Turkey (events recorded in Pawn in Frankincense, 1969) to her mother in Scotland bringing with her an orphan tot whose parentage (Lymond's or his arch enemy's, Graham Mallett?) is debated from time to time. While Lymond manages a capricious and violent Tsar and consorts with the brilliant and exciting courtesan who brought him to Russia, he also guides a group of British merchants through the intrigue-ridden intricacies of the Tsar's preserves. Philippa, now in the service of Mary, Queen of England, is busy unravelling her husband's family's past, mainly in the interest of reuniting Lymond with his mother Sybilla. When Lymond reluctantly returns to Scotland and England, both he and Philippa become entangled in plots in which land and Lymond himself are the main targets. But Philippa is as wily and cool as Lymond's "clear-lidded flower-blue eyes" about which one tires of hearing, and the two are no mean hands themselves at setting traps and collecting enemy pelts. Assassins, traitors, and old enemies come tumbling down, although at the close Lymond is tricked into safety by friends and wife — (still intact). As the others in this series, multi-layered, talky, and thick with thieves but ruthlessly busy.
Pub Date: April 3, 1972
ISBN: 014027989X
Page Count: 864
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1972
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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