"By the last decade of the twentieth century, America...had become accustomed to taking to its heart or its bosom...a particular band of adopted heroes...called dissidents." In her latest bemusement with fancies bred in the dazzlingly cerebrating heads of wryly antiheroic protagonists, and with a spider-web-light satiric voice, Calisher (Age, 1987; The Bobby-Soxer, 1986, etc.) here follows the arrival in America of a famous cinema director— his netting by and release from a "minor Balkan province" (presumably Albania). For 16 years, Paul Gonchev, born in Russia, educated in Japan, has produced "travelogues" in the "confined space" of a fierce small country where travel was a "sin." Then, scenting danger in a country thistled with it, Gonchev's wife, Vuksica—mother of teenaged Laura and bullboy son Klement—arranges to have Gonchev shanghaied ("exported" as he would later think of it) to America, hungry for famous dissidents. Unlikely guides take over: a brace of dissident-hunters; a Breslin-like Manhattan journalist; and Roko, the tiny Japanese woman who translates (Gonchev reserves his English). Back home, meanwhile, the family stirs: Laura arrives in the US bound for yuppiedom; brother-in-law Danilo and Vuksica will perform virtuoso rescues; and a mother shoots her son! All this while Gonchev absorbs the US (accompanied by lover Roko) in short takes: from the color of N.Y.C.'s harbor ("sadness or squid") to college students eating red meat ("recently on the haunch") to a quake in California, where a new friend is slowly devoured by earth-as-womb. Throughout the emigres' journey, Gonchev tosses off bomblets of perceptions, cinematic images giving off little heat but a sharp flickering light, with some incidental buffoonery. At the close, Gonchev, a happy American, will teach his students to forget the dream city of the emigre and "record wherever one is, while standing by the river of flux." A slow, packed, teeming fictional journey, but the becalmed- to-bucketing excursion through the fantasized emigre experience is worth a trip.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-41574-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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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