A pleasure for fans of postmodern fiction.
A writer’s writer gets his due in a welcome gathering of short fictions from three decades.
“If you are looking for story and plot, you have come to the wrong place.” So writes Brian Evenson in his foreword to this omnibus collection of stories by Lutz (Assisted Living, 2017, etc.), gathering five published volumes and a few unpublished pieces. Evenson is right: Not much happens inside a Lutz story save for some neatly written sentences with, more often than not, some strange non sequitur at their heart: “After lunch, in the undemanding dark of a movie theater where he goggled at some stabby, Roman-numeralled sequel, I would plug my ears and loot my own heart.” Most of Lutz’s stories seem more prose poems than traditional yarns with beginnings, middles, and ends. His characters tend to be divorced or on the way to divorce (“Then came nights when, lying awake beside my final wife, I would spend too much time putting my finger on what was wrong. I was wearing the finger out.”). Their time is invested in the ordinary—in the opening story, a man makes love without much conviction, anticipating the “accurate parting of the ways,” then goes to a diner, gets himself inky with a newspaper, and goes to a washroom with a door worthy of Kafka’s Castle. That story is called “Sororally,” which reflects Lutz’s liking of arcane words, glittering in his prose like emeralds in a streambed. Sometimes he lets out a quiet joke—“there are two types of people,” he writes, adding: “Just don’t ask me where they live"—and sometimes he invites a question without answering it, as with a fellow who has found a “new way to cheat on his wife” with no confirming details. Sometimes he accomplishes all this in just a couple of paragraphs, more often just a few pages, though the book is a sturdy volume that proves his aside, “A lot of toner has gone into all I have done."
A pleasure for fans of postmodern fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73353-591-5
Page Count: 499
Publisher: Tyrant Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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