An often entertaining and suspenseful read.
In Erickson’s debut novel, a woman’s dark past threatens to surface and cause trouble in her current, privileged life.
Following her college graduation in 1992, Elle moves to Tokyo to teach English. She immediately meets Mitch, another American, and the two become close, bonding over their shared love of 1980s rock music. After being fired from teaching, Elle takes a job as a hostess and meets Tak, an alluring, wealthy Japanese man. After they start dating, Tak becomes abusive; Elle soon finds herself involved in his illegal drug business and threatened by his seedy colleagues. She also tries to be a supportive friend to Mitch, who’s dealing with his own struggles. In 2017, Elle is a wealthy, suburban wife and a mother to two teenagers: socially conscious, outspoken Brynnie and sporty, somewhat clueless Four. However, she harbors many anxieties—about her body and her marriage to tech company CEO Win Martin, for example—and is disillusioned with the superficial politics and helicopter parenting at Country Day, her kids’ elite school. Brynnie’s question to her (“Are you happy, Mom? Are you living your dream?”) often echoes in her mind. When Win suggests that they all accompany him on a Tokyo business trip, Elle is forced to confront her former life. She goes on to face dangerous figures from her past and painful, disturbing truths. The story alternates between the 1990s and the present. Throughout, Erickson reveals details about Elle’s upbringing, including her relationship with her neglectful mother and the impact that her baby brother’s death has had on her life. As a result, Elle comes across as a complex, multifaceted protagonist. The author deftly balances the plot’s heavier elements, including drug use and physical abuse, with borderline satirical situations, such as the absurdly inappropriate behavior of Country Day parents. Since childhood, Elle has sought direction from songs, relying on their lyrics to dictate how events in her life will play out, so the author frequently includes music references in the text. Perhaps due to the comprehensive back story, the plot’s resolution feels abrupt, and it would have been interesting to see the residual effects of some events.
An often entertaining and suspenseful read.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9989959-0-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mile High Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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