A story with a well-developed protagonist who becomes more appealing as he overcomes obstacles.
In L.G.’s debut drama, a divorced man finds his calling as a truck driver, as the open road provides an escape from a life that’s been defined by failure.
Forty-something Sam Yost is stunned when his wife and the mother of his children, Chrystal, announces that she’s leaving him—and that she’d planned to do so for years. Tired of construction work and wanting a change of scenery, Sam becomes inspired by his brother-in-law and roommate Doug’s occupation as a truck driver, and he aims to become one himself. He takes a course to earn a commercial driver’s license; back in high school, he used to perform poorly on tests, and now he’s anxious about his instructor’s scrutiny from the passenger’s seat. Nevertheless, Sam prevails, but he’s soon faced with tribulations on the road, such as witnessing the aftermath of a horrific car collision and dealing with his truck sliding on ice. He takes solace in frequenting truck-stop diners, as the food reminds him of his tenderhearted mom, who used to console him with home-cooked meals. A waitress catches his eye, but he’s anxious about asking her out. He eventually realizes that all he needs is confidence, which is something that he has when he’s behind the wheel. The author smartly details the basics of operating a truck in lengthy sections devoted to Sam’s driving class; he does so by contrasting trucks with smaller vehicles—noting, for instance, the difference between air brakes and the better-known hydraulic variety. This amplifies certain scenes, including an unnerving moment when Sam nearly loses control of his rig during a turn onto an interstate. However, the story is at its best when it highlights the protagonist’s internal strife. Sam is shown to be socially awkward and possibly dyslexic, and the author draws on his protagonist’s recurrent childhood memories to show how he slowly gains self-respect in later life. With all this in mind, this is a surprisingly upbeat tale, as Sam revels in tiny victories: “Finding good diners on the road was kind of like finding a long-lost friend.”
A story with a well-developed protagonist who becomes more appealing as he overcomes obstacles.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4575-5901-3
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 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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