Drawn from lectures delivered to literary critics, this collection is more deaconly and theoretical than Kermode's last book on the legitimacy of interpretation, The Genesis of Secrecy. But it unshirkingly continues—with admirable steadfastness and without reactive hysteria—a reasoned case for hermeneutics, for a literary criticism that doesn't (as the new French and Yale-ites seem to do) throw out the baby with the bath-water. Kermode will not apologize for the sharp eye he keeps peeled for "secrecy, an inexplicable consonance" in fictional narratives: "We know it is there because the disturbance in the prose signals its presence. It is so arranged that we . . .may ignore it if we choose; but it is there, and has to do with expansion, with the reconciliation of art with honorable rest." This persistence of secrecy in texts, says Kermode, puts the Derrida/Barthes mania fora reader-made or "lisable" text to some disadvantage; all novels, he stresses, share a "property of narrative: it accepts and exploits the pluralities that arise from their situations." As examples, he goes far and wide to analyze Ford's The Good Soldier, Conrad's Under Western Eyes, Green's Loving, even Arnold Bennett's Riceyman Steps and the English mystery Trent's Last Case—finding each of them faux-naif, more knowing and lisable than the French school would even begin to give them credit for. Generous, patient, strenuous Kermode defangs the New French criticism of its self-congratulatory novelty; he demonstrates that all stories, as far back as the Gospels, will mold to some deconstructionist demands—but disproves the idea that any work can be totally self-referential, free-playing, and "unmeaning." This middle ground of serious criticism has so far found its clearest, most wide-ranging advocate in Kermode; and his new book, though difficult and strictly academic, is an important one—ecumenical, level, acute—in its field.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0674048296
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983
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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