Extremely funny yet quite moving (and even plausible): could be one of the first great novels of the new century.
A remembrance of things past that turns inexplicably into a harbinger of the apocalypse—as well as Coupland’s (Hey Nostradamus!, 2003, etc.) weirdest and most accomplished work to date.
Liz Dunn, unmarried and unattached, works as a cubicle clone at some communications firm in Vancouver and appears to have few passions, obsessions, vocations, or hobbies. One night, however, she’s struck by a bolt out of the blue—almost literally—when a fragment of a meteorite lands a few feet away from her in the parking lot of her local supermarket. All at once, her life begins to change: she becomes hopeful, lighthearted, and about as euphoric as a Canadian can be. Shortly thereafter, she even receives a telephone call from the Mounties asking her to stop in at a nearby hospital, where a young man has been admitted who claims to be her son—as, in fact, he is. Jeremy is the fruit of a one-night stand in Rome on a high school trip 20 years before, but Liz put him up for adoption immediately after his birth and never saw him again. Now, he has multiple sclerosis and is suffering from hallucinations brought on by drugs. Liz immediately assumes responsibility for his care, then slowly begins to recall the events of that long-ago summer in Rome. When police contact her and ask her to assist them in a difficult and extremely bizarre investigation, she even gets summoned to Vienna to meet the boy’s father, whose name she has forgotten. En route, she inadvertently causes an international incident, shuts down one of the largest airports in the world, and ends up in jail. But she does it all with as little fuss as possible and manages to make her way to a happy end.
Extremely funny yet quite moving (and even plausible): could be one of the first great novels of the new century.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-505-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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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