A redemption story, with some satisfying suspense and triumph, that delivers too much unbelievable tragedy for such a...
A talented young runner escapes a turbulent childhood only to face even bigger challenges in this debut novel.
With an abusive father, Wes Strong grows up living in a state of undeserved criticism and fear. A hardworking student who just wants to make his father proud, Wes asks earnestly in prayer “What have I done, God? What am I doing wrong?” Even though he never does anything wrong, his father’s abuse is merely the first, and least awful, of the horrors awaiting him. He briefly finds an outlet for frustration on the running team, even achieving a scholarship to a nearby university. But as he relishes escaping his father, his indulgence in his first and only beer quickly snowballs into a sudden pain pill addiction and a drug deal that ends with the murder of a policeman, landing Wes in prison for six years. To top it all off, his mother dies in a car wreck around the same time. Despite all this adversity, Wes carries on and tries to avoid the two leading rival gangs at his new home in prison: the “boys” and the “freaks.” But, poster boy for Murphy’s Law that he is, Wes soon becomes a target for rape by the “boys” and seeks refuge with their enemies, discovering that they truly are freaks: “Jesus Freaks.” Wes builds a relationship with God that seems to reverse his bad luck. In telling Wes’ tale, Smith makes it difficult for a reader to take the protagonist’s “redemption” seriously. Most of the characters are two-dimensional, either completely monstrous or saintly, and Wes’ wrong place, wrong time “crime” is much less intriguing than a true dark side. The author excels in small, contained scenes, especially Wes’ races, which are taut, suspenseful, and compulsively readable. But Smith never decides how best to approach Wes, sometimes narrating from his first-person perspective and sometimes describing him at a distance like a documentarian. The result is a disjointed character who never earns the sympathy he truly deserves.
A redemption story, with some satisfying suspense and triumph, that delivers too much unbelievable tragedy for such a fragmented central character.Pub Date: June 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-4282-4
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2016
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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