Slow at times, though the heartfelt glimpse of the afterlife and fears of judgment will strike a chord with many readers.
Packard’s (All it Takes, 2011) novel imagines an atheist’s experience in the afterlife.
Living out his waning years in an assisted living facility, 80-year-old Jack Treadwell isn’t surprised by his own death so much as he is by his final destination. As an atheist, he’s amazed to find himself in heaven, or at least a place that seems very much like it. Long-dead acquaintances and historical figures ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Studs Terkel traverse cloudlets, communicate freely and vanish as only spirits can. A figure resembling St. Peter informs Jack that his judgment—which will send Jack to eternal hell or eternal bliss—has been put on hold because God is in a sort of crisis. The creator of all things has become disillusioned with people. His teachings have been distorted by religion, his granting of free will to humans has resulted in centuries of bloodshed, and people like Jack think they can simply apologize for their misdeeds and receive eternal salvation. As Jack reflects on his time on Earth and learns more about the reality of the afterlife, readers are taken on a journey of personal inquiry featuring familiar feelings of guilt for past wrongs. Readers with undeveloped (or indifferent) ideas of the afterlife will likely relate to Jack and his concerns. How “good” does one have to be to enter the kingdom of heaven? Jack’s cloudlet surfing can prove dull at times, as when he takes a brief walk with Charles Darwin—a stimulating idea that may prove too heavy-handed for some. Nevertheless, Jack’s vision of the afterlife is decidedly as worrisome and varied as the character himself.
Slow at times, though the heartfelt glimpse of the afterlife and fears of judgment will strike a chord with many readers.Pub Date: June 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484811702
Page Count: 208
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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