Potty humor worthy of the Golden Girls, plus musings on friendship and the metaphysical as true religion—all rolled into one.
A spicy sequel offers an engaging ode to the lasting bonds of southern sisterhood and life-begins-at-50 optimism that will melt the most cynical of Yankee hearts.
What is it about the water down south that makes women bond for life as solidly as Fixodent to gums? This follow-up to the Red Hat Club (2003), with its references to adult toy stores, booze, 12-step programs, and Dr. Atkins, proves that even if Smith’s is a well-explored genre, her adventurous tale of six middle-aged Atlanta women remains a welcome ride. The Red Hats, dressed accordingly, are still meeting for their monthly ladies’ luncheons, but, thanks to the disposable income of millionaire member Teeny, they’re soon off on a series of wacky, husbandless sojourns—to Las Vegas, to Florida, even a monthlong Bahamian plastic-surgery cruise for extreme makeovers. Each exploit is threaded with earnest sentimentality as the women tout their 12 sacred traditions (though tradition 5, “Mind Your Own Business,” is rarely observed). When the gang heads to Sin City to kidnap wayward and substance-abusing sister Pru and steal her away to a Rocky Mountain rehab, the trip culminates in a laugh-out-loud episode as morally fixated narrator Georgia, unprepared for the sound of sirens when she hits the jackpot, flees her winning slot machine. Nostalgic flashbacks to the women’s sorority-sister youth illuminate each character’s past and hopefully render the story more relevant to those unfamiliar with AARP guidelines and More magazine. Smith’s lilting twang and kitchen-sink wisdom permeate every paragraph, making the suspension of disbelief surprisingly easy. Even a late-in-the-game Elton John cameo can be dismissed as well-intentioned overzealousness before you turn the page to see what will happen next.
Potty humor worthy of the Golden Girls, plus musings on friendship and the metaphysical as true religion—all rolled into one.Pub Date: March 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-31691-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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
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
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