Dribbling sentiment, square-wheeled characters of absolute nobility, and puffs of historical personalities: those are the dubious attractions of this Denker clanker about a brace of married doctors, mainly in the US, 1848-1885. In spite of difficulties facing Jews in 19th-century Vienna, David Lilliendahl presses on to finish his medical studies with distinction; then, however, his participation in a student revolutionary-movement will send him to America. And, though armed with the knowledge he acquired while assisting the great medical pioneer Semmelweis (who found the cause of puerperal fever), David is also burdened with the dread of being called upon to perform surgery—a task at which, in an emergency, he has once failed. Meanwhile, New York WASP Mary Sinclair becomes one of the first students of the Philadelphia Female Medical School, then attends (as the only woman student) the École de MÉdecine of Paris. So, eventually, Mary and David will meet during a Manhattan anti-slavery riot—and soon are both appointed to Jews Hospital. They marry; Mary, in spite of her father's horror, is drawn to Judaism, converting: "The long and tragic history of a people ennobled by sacrifice and suffering began to affect her." When Civil War comes, David will serve in the Union Army in Virginia: he loses his fear of surgery in the midst of the under-supplied hospital camaraderie and a nightmare of death. (He even fraternizes with the enemy—when a Confederate Colonel surprises him with: "Bist du ein yid?") Reunited, and the parents of young Davey, Mary and David continue their fight for progressive medicine; in private and hospital practice they cope with cholera, diphtheria, and TB. And though Mary has a nervous breakdown when they lose son Davey, after the birth of Amos, to diphtheria, Dr. Abraham Jacobi comes to the rescue with good sense and dream analysis: Mary returns to her work, joining David in the crusades for pasteurized milk and sweatshop reform. . . and so on through the years. Denker (Outrage, The Actress, etc.) combines two tried-and-true commercial genres here: doctor heroics and Jewish-family history. Along with Semmelweis, he tosses in such guest-star giants as Lister, Koch, and Pasteur—who says: "I think we. . . are selected by God to make our personal human sacrifices on the altar of medical ignorance." But, while some readers will be drawn by the subject-matter appeal, they'll soon discover that—with little convincing period ambience, only a smidgin of real medical history, and dull, dull people—this is one doctor-novel that's generally anesthetic.
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1982
ISBN: 038067405X
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982
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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