A compact and vivid short novel, unpublished during his lifetime and previously untranslated into English, by the great Portuguese de Queir¢s (18431900) whose essential kinship with Balzac and Flaubert was not recognized until long after his death. An introductory note written in 1925 by the author's son reasons that this lean tale of marital infidelity and thwarted vengeance (it was discovered in a trunk filled with his father's manuscripts) was probably composed between 1877 and 1889 and was intended to form part of de Queir¢s's planned multivolume ``Scenes from Portuguese Life.'' It's the story of Godofredo Alves, a fat, balding businessman who is nevertheless ``something of a romantic'' and whose passions are raised to melodramatic extremes when, upon returning home unexpectedly, he finds his wife in the arms of his business partner. Godofredo plunges into a kaleidoscope of emotions, ranging from suicidal outrage to a chastened acceptance of others', and his own, frailty and foolishness. It's hard to say whether de Queir¢s considered the novella finished when he put it aside, and whether the complacent sense of peace that descends on Godofredo evinces no more than his own romantic myopia. What is certain is that de Queir¢s, one of the underappreciated masters of 19th-century realism, creates an amazing density of character and context in just a few bold strokes. An enormity of information about his protagonist's earlier life, overemotional temperament, and passive suggestibility is conveyed with imperturbable economy. Better still, as Godofredo's passions begin to cool, the very rhythm of the sentences slows and seems to ``breathe,'' as it were, more evenly, as if matching the altered pace of the man's bruised but slowly healing feelings. And in the closing half-dozen pages, we feel the weight of change and growth as they work their way through several inextricably entangled and mutually dependent lives. A slight work given depth and resonance by the indisputable presence of literary genius.
Pub Date: Nov. 29, 1996
ISBN: 0-8112-1399-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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