Reported originally in the February 15th bulletin, this was postponed to the above date as a mid-summer selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. The original report ran as follows: "Not to be associated with Graham Greene's earlier works (Brighton Rock, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear, etc.) this is a novel of considerable seriousness and stature in which the sensational brilliance of his previous writing has been subdued by sincerity, by compassion, and by a strong sense of faith. But with no sacrifice of narrative momentum, this pursues the theme of good and evil in its ultimate implications, portrays the corruption of a man by a worldly- rather than a final-judgment. This is the story of Scobie, whose austere integrity has remained above question during his fifteen years' service as Assistant Police Commissioner in a West African coastal town, has brought him few friends and many enemies. Bound by a sense of responsibility to his work, to his wife, Louise, for whom he feels only pity and the pathos of her unattractiveness, Scobie becomes the victim of that pity when to give Louise a fresh start- he borrows the money for her passage from a Syrian, Yussuf. Falling in love again, this time with a childlike widow of nineteen, Scobie again finds that passion dies away, that only pity is left, and his indiscretion exposed to the malevolent Yussuf- he becomes an object of blackmail. In a descrescendo to dishonor which leads from doubt to deceit, indirectly to murder, Scobie commits the unforgivable sin in the tenets of his Catholicism, suicides, but in so doing finds the renunciation of his life... A book which offers a variety of virtues- in its external drama, in its satiric subtlety as it is directed against the insular, colonial scene, and in its relentless portrayal of a man destroyed by the strength of his conscience rather than the weakness of the flesh. For an adult, appreciative audience.
Pub Date: July 12, 1948
ISBN: 0140283323
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1948
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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