An emotionally challenging novel, rife with family issues that are both modern and timeless.
A story of interracial marriage that focuses on a complex relationship between people with vastly different backgrounds and priorities.
Misurella’s (Only Sons, 2012) latest novel tells the story of Margy Winters of Iowa, the fair-skinned, blonde daughter of neglectful, abusive parents. Her husband, Everet Hamilton, is a successful African-American civil rights attorney from Connecticut who’s considering running for public office. Margy’s home life is still fraught with turmoil, albeit in different ways than when she was a child. The issues between her and Everet run much deeper than race: He’s everything that she’s not, because he’s level-headed, stalwart and the product of a very involved mother. The couple’s biggest quarrels stem from his political aspirations and his lack of respect for Margy’s artistic career. However, while they often battle about these matters, they barely even discuss Margy’s repeated infidelity. As Everet’s career begins to take off, their disagreements grow increasingly volatile until they reach a near-catastrophic boiling point. Through a combination of fast-paced plotting, quick-witted dialogue and well-placed flashbacks, readers learn a great deal about the events and character traits that led Margy to her many poor decisions. Even so, Everet has flaws of his own, which he must address before their relationship has any chance of succeeding. The author adeptly weaves in complicating circumstances to keep readers frustrated but hopeful that the couple might work things out, against all odds. As Misurella unspools this engaging tale, he also examines some heavy issues, including gender equality, incest and sexual abuse. Along the way, he creates scenes that are so realistic that the book almost becomes an experience in voyeurism—yet readers will be unable to look away.
An emotionally challenging novel, rife with family issues that are both modern and timeless.Pub Date: May 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494852122
Page Count: 368
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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