Not likely to find many fans this side of the Atlantic.
Debut fiction (published in 1994 in England) from the megaselling author of Bridget Jones novels, this about an African refugee camp volunteer who enlists her glamorous London friends for a celebrity benefit.
Rosie Richardson is a young literary publicist, naive to a fault and madly in love with Oliver Marchant, a handsome cad who hosts a well-regarded BBC show on the arts, when she first volunteers for SUSTAIN (a famine relief agency). Heartbroken over Oliver’s refusal to make a commitment, and fed up with his selfishness and terribly, terribly controlling behavior about important things like her nondesigner clothing, Rosie heads for Africa, determined to do something about the starving innocents caught in the crossfire of yet another civil war. She returns to London somewhat sadder and wiser, but volunteers again several years later. Many ironic cultural misunderstandings ensue, and, of course, there is all that messy dying to cope with. But cope Rosie does, along with a predictable cast of supporting others: Henry, a raffish and oversexed aide, who charms the khaki pants off Sian, a pretty nurse, when not being chided by Dr. Betty, a saintly older woman who is soon replaced by a love interest for Rosie—Robert O’Rourke, a dedicated and selfless physician. All well and good, but Rosie seems to view the unspeakable tragedy of mass starvation as a mere backdrop for her own decidedly minor problems of unrequited love and general anomie. Meanwhile, the people she’s come to help are seen mostly as dirty, fatalistic, and—worst—utterly impractical. When famine strikes again, though, Rosie gets the sort of remorseful Oliver to corral some famous folk for an international benefit and save the day. Sort of. Fielding’s heroine may not share the overt racism of the relief agency’s press rep, who hopes to introduce “the notion of the learned African person . . . thirsting for knowledge to replace what we call the Starving Monkey Myth,” but Rosie is unpleasantly condescending all too often. And the contrast between London’s media elite—the chattering classes, and how—and the mute suffering of the famine’s helpless victims makes for heavy-handed satire at best.
Not likely to find many fans this side of the Atlantic.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89450-8
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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