Well-meaning soap, riddled with clichés.
A veteran paperback author returns with another earnest romance (I Know Who Tomorrow Holds, not reviewed; co-contributor, Winter Nights, 1998).
Kristen Wakefield is looking for love but not finding it, just like so many other well-educated, well-dressed, well-heeled black women in New Orleans. But she does have a fascinating career as a museum curator and a personal wardrobe that includes every expensive label known to womankind. The crystal chandeliers gleam and all the upholstery is silk in the circles she moves in, every step muffled by thick carpets, every object in sight indicating bogus sophistication (“You’ve been to Paris, of course,” says Maurice, her friend Claudette’s creepy husband, proffering a glass of Dom Perignon. “Several times,” Kristen replies, wishing he would stop touching her). If only Claudette would return and keep Maurice in line, they could get back to talking about the fabulous collection of contemporary African-American art that Kristen wants to borrow for a show at the Haywood Museum. Oh, no! Breathing heavily, Maurice comes closer . . .and closer still. It’s time to call for help. Enter our hero: brawny Rafe Crawford, who shoulders his way into the scene and punches the troublesome lecher in the nose. Rafe is a Real Man, a self-taught furniture maker determined to escape his family history of violence and abuse. But the villainous Maurice is furious that his evil designs on Kristen’s virtue have been thwarted—and later claims that she tried to seduce him and then persuaded her brutish friend to attack. Claudette will never lend the artwork now, Kristen knows—and what will her beloved mother and distinguished stepfather think? Bravely, she soldiers on, though her false friends have become her open enemies. Forced to resign, she finds that no other museum or arts organization will hire her. And how can she dare to have feelings for Rafe, when her love for him only brings him pain?
Well-meaning soap, riddled with clichés.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30734-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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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