Woodson still has one foot in the young adult world of her earlier novels (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, p. 782, etc.) with this dreamy, sometimes too spare story of an African-American girl growing up in Brooklyn from 1966 to 1978. Early on, the unnamed narrator's older sister, Angel, claims that with a little effort their family could be like the Brady Bunch, but the text slowly reveals how far that is from the truth. Angel and her sister have three brothers: Troy, a gay teenager who goes to Vietnam to prove his manhood; Carlos, who is sexually abusive from an early age; and Cory, who is apparently the son of their mother and another man. The narrator's cool observation of her own emerging sexuality and the sexual behavior of those around her is the most appealing aspect here. Woodson has an infallible ear for dialogue among children, in particular the way they talk (often with naive brilliance) about sex. During a playground discussion in which young girls touch edgily on the subject of sexual abuse, one who tries to speak concretely about her experience is cut off: `` `So what?' someone says. `Like it don't happen to everybody?' '' In another episode, the ten-year-old narrator and a friend named Olga straddle each other in a basement to get ``the feeling,'' until Catholic Olga realizes with horror that they're carrying on next to an altar. Chapters build on each other, but the information provided is too scanty to really create any depth. In its absence, Woodson attempts to goose the narrative with dramatic incidents, or events that on the surface seem harmless but have danger rumbling underneath. The wistful tone is not enough to sustain momentum, since it is never entirely clear what these characters want. Ultimately, these are finely written vignettes that just miss meshing into something more forceful. A photograph that fades too quickly.
Pub Date: Jan. 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93721-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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