The lovers’ high-wire act, in the final third, is gripping, the earlier stuff, like Reba copping drugs, merely titillating....
Farm girl becomes supermodel in actor Bogosian’s dark, raunchy second novel (after Mall, 2000), about sex and drugs in the big city.
Reba Cook is 20 when she loses both parents to cancer, leaving her alone with older brother Billy on their failing farm in upstate New York. She gets no comfort from her brother, a hard-drinking bully ashamed of lusting after her, or from her new boss, Frank, a bank manager unhappy with her oral sex technique. One Saturday in the city, selling their apples at the market alongside Billy, she allows herself to be picked up. The guy deflowers and discards her in short order. A second guy hits on her at a McDonald’s, and this time Reba lucks out. Paul is a fashion photographer who sees the potential in this leggy blonde with beautiful eyes. In a heartbeat, she has an agency contract and becomes an overnight sensation. But this isn’t just Reba’s story. There’s also Rick, a 45-year-old doctor with a lucrative private practice, a happy family in the burbs, and a raging midlife crisis. He has a swell wife in Laura and two sweet kids, yet he yearns to run wild, though so far all he has managed is a Portnoyesque involvement with his penis (there are three masturbation scenes). He gets a shot at liberation when Billy becomes his patient. If Reba has ascended to its heights, Billy has hurtled implausibly into the city’s depths, and, now a violent derelict, he’s been razor-slashed by drug dealers. Late in the story, Rick and Reba meet to discuss her brother. Reba is snorting heroin and sleeping around, and reckless doctor and needy model launch themselves into a grand passion. Will it consume them?
The lovers’ high-wire act, in the final third, is gripping, the earlier stuff, like Reba copping drugs, merely titillating. Not surprisingly, Bogosian has a fine ear: more dialogue and fewer interior monologues might have made for a leaner, more powerful tale.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3588-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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