Engaging tales that should please fans of 20th-century American male authors.
A collection of short stories examines marriage, fatherhood, and divorce from a variety of angles.
In this volume, Ackerman (Write Screenplays that Sell, 2014, etc.) explores familiar territory with fresh eyes. His stories follow characters approaching the end of a relationship or enduring its immediate aftermath. Relationships between parent and child, husband and wife, or even a family of rabbits—the author places them all under his microscope precisely at their moments of transformation. The collection strongly recalls the conflicted, masculine themes and anxieties of John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth, but mostly Updike. Ackerman shares Charles Bukowski’s love of the racetrack (the setting for “Incidental Contact” and “The Dancer Horse”), but not his passion for heavy boozing and prostitution. At times, there are dashes of Haruki Murakami’s surrealism, as in the title story or the opener, “Trim,” in which a woman starts to appear regularly at the protagonist’s house and give him haircuts. In every story, the author walks a thin line between sentimentalism and emotional revelation; the collection slips into both sides equally. “The Dancer Horse,” in which a man goes home with a woman he met at a horse race only to change his mind, takes itself too seriously and fails to feel authentic. “General Doolittle's Raid Over Tokyo” would be an exquisite tale of a marriage if it weren’t wedded to a melodramatic incest plot (incest, oddly, is a fairly common theme in the book). But when Ackerman is at his best, as in “Roof Garden” or “Leash,” he captures an elusive sensation of loss to marvelous effect. The former story follows a man spending the day with his daughter before he tells her about his decision to leave his wife; it would fit nicely in an Updike collection. The latter is a much-welcome deviation from the other tales. “Leash” focuses on a woman who must care for her estranged daughter’s dog after she dies in a car accident. It’s an impressive piece effusing genuine empathy, and it proves Ackerman is capable of more than the male-centered stories he writes so comfortably.
Engaging tales that should please fans of 20th-century American male authors.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-3-639-79489-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Hadassa Word Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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