More than a few too many characters, subplots, and themes muffle the impact of this grandiose historical picaresque by the Mexican author of the previously translated and essentially similar 1492 (1991). Aridjis's narrative is divided into 27 ``visions'' seen, and relayed to the reader, by Alfonso de LÇon, a monk whose dedication to his vocation as an illuminator of manuscripts does not protect him from yielding frequently to carnal desires or from the threat of a bloody reunion with his malevolent twin brother, Abd Allah of Cordova, a powerful warrior member of the Saracen armies whom Alfonso and his brethren devoutly believe ``will annihilate all Christendom before the year 1000 comes to an end.'' The novel begins in a confusing welter of unrelated scenes, then settles for a time into a chronological account of the twins' birth (to a Moorish Caliph's concubine), their upbringing and education, and the separate paths their warring temperaments set them on. Then we're swiftly cast back to a kaleidoscopic landscape delineated with apocalyptic imagery and numbingly explicit descriptions of sexual acts and physical violence, and populated by assorted minstrels, pilgrims, hermaphrodites, and such laboriously fabricated grotesques as Isidoro, the Messiah of the Poor, a kind of Marxist Lord of Misrule reputed to possess ``a celestial letter signed by the Lord Jesus, which...authenticated him as the true Son of God.'' We feel the book straining to impress its readers (the addition of a nine-page Bibliography seems, shall we say, a trifle pretentious?). Eventually, though, the conflict between the brothers resurfaces, then climaxes in battle, finally determining whether Alfonso indeed is ``the Lord of the Last Days'' who will bind up the Evil One, thus preserving the Christian faith for another thousand years. The seed of a powerful fiction here becomes drenched early on by melodramatic fustian, and never grows into anything remotely resembling a coherent novel.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-14342-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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
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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