The most original admissions essay seen since Legally Blonde.
A 14-year old pens a premature and very precocious admissions essay in Levangie’s quirky latest (The After Wife, 2012, etc.).
Perry Gonzales, daughter of “the estimable Yelena Maria Gonzales, R.N.” a hardworking single mother, is tendering her application to Bennington College, four years early. This scholarship student, who commutes from rough North Hollywood to the exclusive Mark Frost Academy in Beverly Hills, is already anticipating her future as a writer, a career that can only be advanced by attending the same Vermont college that produced Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt. Her personal essay, as such essays must, demonstrates community service and extracurricular components: in Perry’s case, her thriving small business tutoring her privileged, spoiled and tragically flawed Mark Frost classmates. Each of the seven tutoring assignments she details is a mini-allegory about a deadly sin, complete with illustrations (not seen.) Lust involves the cossetted daughter whose birthday wish, a backyard concert by the boy band du jour, has unexpected consequences for her neglected, studious brother. Two of the anecdotes, Wrath and Greed, detail unorthodox, some would say criminal, methods for coping with sociopathic children. In Gluttony and Sloth, respectively, an obese student whose hunger literally knows no bounds and a video gamer whose body has atrophied except in those areas required for his all-consuming pastime suffer symbolic retribution for their excesses. As her “essay” ticks off the transgressions, some facts about Perry herself begin to emerge: She is academically gifted but humbly diligent, ever grateful and respectful toward her mother, and, where a handsome quarterback (in Pride) is concerned, as vulnerable as her airheaded Mark Frost schoolmates. As her own treatise about sin conclusively shows, it is possible to be too rich, but could Perry be too good? Although at first blush this “cautionary tale” mimics a YA novel in the Gossip Girls vein, Levangie’s conceit works on an adult level mainly due to the fact that it’s economical—too much elaboration would weigh down what is essentially a collection of frothy shaggy dog jokes.
The most original admissions essay seen since Legally Blonde.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16673-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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