Unapologetic thrills with oodles of flash.
All plotlines lead to Vegas in this latest installment of Collins' saga of the irrepressible and seemingly immortal Lucky Santangelo.
Lucky is convening her family at The Keys, her lavish hotel/casino/condo empire in Las Vegas. The occasion is the 18th birthday of Max, her daughter with latest husband (and soul mate) Lennie. Son Bobby, wildly successful as a nightclub impresario and heir to the fortune of his late father, a Greek shipping magnate, frets about introducing his girlfriend Denver, a prosecuting attorney, to his family for the first time. The family reunion, however glitzy, is only a setup for Collins’ trademark seamy subplots. The author excels at portraying villains her fans love to hate, and in this outing she does not disappoint. Billionaire Armand Jordan, son of King Emir of the fictitious Gulf state Akramshar, is not merely a misogynist but a rapist. Although he has a wife and family back in Akramshar, he prefers to hire elite call girls and debase them in the vilest ways possible. Armand’s most recent obsession is his drive to possess Las Vegas’ most opulent real estate: The Keys. Undeterred by Lucky’s outraged refusal to sell, Armand goes to Vegas determined to change her mind, but his ex-showgirl mother Peggy, whom he detests, insists on tagging along. Before joining King Emir’s harem, Peggy had an unforgettable one-night stand with Gino, Lucky’s father, in his mafia kingpin days. Could Gino, now in his 90s, actually be Armand’s father? Max eagerly sheds her virginity with movie star Billy Melina. Max and Billy may be star-crossed lovers, but will Lucky approve? Especially since Billy is embroiled in a messy divorce battle with Lucky’s best friend? All of the thrills swirl around Lucky, now more matriarchal figurehead (albeit one still endowed with raven hair, silken skin and an unflagging libido) than major player. Still, when Lucky’s precious Keys is threatened, her street-fighter instincts resurface, sparking the novel’s over-the-top but enjoyable climax.
Unapologetic thrills with oodles of flash.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-56746-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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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