The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.
Masterton (Fire Spirit, 2010, etc.) continues his Night Warriors series by tossing half-a-dozen untried Warriors at a nefarious 12th-century amputee monk.
Something is definitely wrong at Cleveland’s Griffin House Hotel. In Room 717, a disembodied voice predicts doom for charity worker Katie Kercheval. Police detective Walter Wisocky warns Rhodajane Berry, who’s come to town for her grandmother’s funeral, to report any odd doings in Room 309. Record promoter Lincoln Walker is attacked by a wraithlike figure who sets Room 104 afire. Rooms 237 and 239, where twin teen singers Kiera and Kieran Kaiser are staying, keep turning into an open field. The problem, cabdriver John Dauphin patiently explains, isn’t just with the hotel, it’s with these guests, all of whom are unwittingly sensitive to the dreams with which the walls have been infused ever since Cleveland Flats rapist/killer Gordon Veitch polluted them back in the 1930s. And the evil of these dreams goes back even further to the Cistercian monk Brother Albrecht, who’s been plotting dream-borne revenge and reunion with his beloved ever since his arms and legs were amputated in punishment for adultery 900 years ago. The first third of this installment (Night Wars, 2006, etc.) hints at these developments in some truly creepy ways. The rest—revealing their superhero destinies to the Griffin House guests (refashioned as An-Gryferai, Xyrena, Zebenjo’Yyx, Jekkalon and Jemexxa) and arming them to enter the dream world and do battle with Veitch, now calling himself Mago Verde, and Brother Albrecht—is more routine action stuff.
The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6997-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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