Denker's newest medical melodrama (The Healers, Kincaid) seems designed to instill in all parents of a bright, daring if moody overachiever the fear that their child may actually be clinically insane, and that the aforementioned traits are just symptoms of the illness. We meet the beautiful former star of soap operas, Claire Ward, and her network V.P. workaholic husband, Don, who is never home (guaranteed bummer) when his son needs him; Robert, their adopted son, is brilliant, athletic, idealistic and genetically cursed with manic depression. The plot clanks along by formula: in typical horror-story fashion, the perfect boy's affliction shows up first in small ways, then swells to vast and incredible proportions—at a punk-rock concert he jumps up onto the stage and tries to wrest the guitar out of the hands of the leader, provoking a riot. But his worst breakdown is precipitated when, though his team's ahead, quarterback Robbie throws away the ball in the last 14 seconds of the championship game. Next we have a rote detective mini-plot as the Wards trace Robert's natural mother, only to learn that she committed suicide in an asylum. Calamity follows upon calamity, and the characters, with their slow reactions and perpetual amazement, are ludicrous indeed. At the end, we sit for the second time through the same vigil with his parents—word for word—that we witnessed in Chapter One. Worst of all, Denker trivializes the complexity of mental illness, particularly among minors, dealing with it as a creepy foreordained disease in which the patient's only hope is to passively take his drugs. If Robert, My Son surprises at all it is simply that at the end of a work so devoid of any save accidental humor, it is revealed that the grim Don Ward will embark on a new career as a comedy writer—too late, though, to save this book.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1985
ISBN: 0688059570
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985
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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