Intentionally like a Victorian melodrama, Colegate's latest (Deceits of Time, 1988, etc.) has mysterious characters, hints of wrongdoing in high places, and a hero and heroine who virtuously resist temptation, though not without some regrets. A retired history teacher is the narrator of a long-ago summer in England. As he makes his daily round through the city of Bath, he introduces the setting and the actors and actresses, as it were, who will have roles in the small drama that then begins to unfold: In 1876, the city, once a fashionable resort, is decaying and forgotten. Hoping to revitalize their town, the city fathers have decided to build a grand hotel and spa. A competition for the design has been organized; Queen Victoria has promised to visit; and the city is agog with anticipation. A mysterious woman, Madame Sofia, who claims cousinship with the Tsar, is new in town. A spiritualist as well, her visions of the city's nastier undercurrents are unsettling but accurate. Meanwhile, the voluptuous wife of the City Surveyor plots to get her husband's design approved; another newcomer, Caspar Freeling, who is ``prepared to be more or less whatever they wanted him to be, on condition that the game progressed,'' seems to lead a double life; and the beautiful and good Charlotte, married and devoted mother of two, is attracted to Stephen Collingwood, the curate, who works with the poor of the city. Stephen's love for Charlotte and sense of inadequacy in his ministry provoke a crisis of faith, resolved only at the close by an appropriately heroic sacrifice. The Queen visits; the villains are exposed; and the hero and heroine come through. That the narrator turns out to be the grandson of Charlotte is irrelevant if not anticlimactic. Rich in atmospherics, settings, and characters—Stephen and Charlotte are unusually vivid and convincing—and yet the implicit melodrama and satire of city boosterism and Victorian manners is never more than a clever conceit. Disappointing, then, despite so much that's good.
Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40880-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
