The stifling humidity of the prose will push a lot of readers out of this kitchen.
Take a batch of characters, toss them into one cooking class, glaze heavily with folk wisdom.
Lillian, the Pacific Northwest restaurant owner and teacher of the Monday night school of the book’s title, is part matchmaker, part Buddhist priest, part Alice Waters. She specializes in organic ingredients and a slow-cooking, who-needs-recipes style, an approach she perfected as a child when her dad ran off and her mother retreated into books. Cooking, for her, is a pathway to healing, and conveniently enough her latest group of students could each use some help. Among them are Chloe, a young woman who’s klutzy and in a bad relationship; Tom, who’s mourning the death of his wife; Claire, a mom who fears motherhood is erasing her identity; Ian, a computer engineer who’s incapable even of cooking a pot of rice; and Carl and Helen, an older couple who’ve gotten past a history of infidelity. Together they reminisce, vent and learn their way around crab dishes, cakes and Thanksgiving dinners, even though Lillian’s stingy about instructions and the entrees aren’t exactly beginners’ fare. Bauermeister capably evokes the sensual pleasures of a busy kitchen, but her story is thickly sentimental, all smoothed edges and earnest dialogue. For instance, one character introduces herself, ridiculously, by saying, “before you start cooking with me, I should tell you, I am losing my way, these days.” No worries: Lillian will assuredly give her and the rest of the class some direction, and Bauermeister guides each individual’s story along with a pitiless blitzkrieg of soft-focus similes and metaphors—each action and detail persistently equates to a dancing child, a happy puppy, a down comforter, a butterfly or a flower. To her credit, the author pulls off a tough trick of juggling an assortment of characters and making each feel lived-in and human. But as she inevitably guides each toward bliss, the book feels less empathetic and more hokey and melodramatic.
The stifling humidity of the prose will push a lot of readers out of this kitchen.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-15543-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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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