Marriage under siege is the somewhat one-sided theme of poet and short-fiction writer Driscoll’s poignant first novel, winning him Pushcart’s Editors’ Book Award. Perry and his wife Marcia have been trying for years to have a child, and now panic’s setting in as they approach 40. But the more Marcia frets, the more ambivalent Perry feels. When in the course of his job as a Mystic, Connecticut, parole officer he meets Angela, wife of smart but impulsive check-forger Roland, he has trouble keeping his hands to himself. Angela is just pregnant with child number two; she and Roland are struggling to make ends meet for the sake of their firstborn, who’s not even a year old. Even so, she’s drawn to Perry, who seems to represent everything her husband doesn—t. Unlike Perry, however, Angela knows where to draw the line between fantasy and reality, leaving him remorseful enough about his desires to find Roland a job and a chance to get two feet back under him. Marcia senses her spouse slipping away, especially when he takes their nephew out on the Jetski in rough weather, nearly drowns himself, then almost bleeds to death from a cut incurred while breaking into their apartment. So she moves out to let him think things over—while Roland, already tense about his growing family, does the wrong thing in a job-site confrontation and decides to skip town. Once again, Perry’s involved, trusted by both Angela and Roland, but his assistance brings them only tragedy, while also opening a serious rift between him and Marcia. Visceral stuff, with richly detailed scenes of life on both sides of the tracks. The husbands, though, achieve significantly more substance than their wives, and some of the plotting, especially involving Perry’s family back in Michigan, seems digressive.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1998
ISBN: 1-888889-08-X
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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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