This novel isn’t for the squeamish, prudish, or faint of heart.
When Ronald Checker hops into the back of Terry “Juice” Lawson’s taxi late one night in Edinburgh, on the eve of Hurricane Bawbag, Terry finds himself entangled in various webs of love, lust, money, and violence.
Checker is an American "punk businessman" complete with reality TV stardom, Southern pedigree, and fanatical, self-serving religious faith. When he hops into the back of Terry’s cab and hires him for the remainder of his stay in the city, Terry’s life begins to stockpile not only criminal plots, but also an onslaught of undesirables one might hope to avoid: his flighty half brother, Jonty MacKay, who works under-the-table painting gigs; his various bastard children; several prostitutes; “The Poof,” a local gang ringleader, and his posse; a Dane with a competing offer on a rare bottle of Scotch; and too many women to count or catalog. Terry manages to deal drugs, placate the man-child millionaire, and shag his way across the entire Midlothian; he attempts to locate a missing call girl, nearly reconnects with his children, and discovers that his heart is no longer healthy enough for sex. His relationships are plenty, complicated, and nuanced. As always, Welsh (The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, 2015, etc.) takes things from zero to 60 in his latest novel. Chapters alternate between the perspectives of various characters, and many are written entirely in broad Scots, one of Welsh’s trademark stylings. Also true to form are the characters, always gritty and with unrelenting personality. The baggage each character lugs around is heavy, often resulting in various shades of violence such as rape, murder, and arson. Masterfully, Terry develops and stays true to his almost fiendish appetites throughout the novel, all while exploring his complicated family history and romantic endeavors, and still manages to avoid incarceration.
This novel isn’t for the squeamish, prudish, or faint of heart.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-54089-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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