Michener's shortest novel is his timeliest as well, a slick, wide-eyed paean to the Constitution that uses the Iran-contra scandal as a springboard to chronicle one family's historic passion for the American heritage. Michener names his hero Lt. Col. Norman Starr, but we can be sure it's a North Start that shines here; Start (who narrates) has just been called to testify before Congress about shady Nicaraguan contra dealings, and he lets on at once that he's "heard from everyone that [Lt. Col. Ollie North] was a fine dedicated patriot." And so is Starr and so were his ancestors, as we learn from Starr's ruminations on seven generations of patriotic predecessors—captivating historical vignettes forming the meat of the book and woven skillfully within Starr's talks with his loving wife and loyal attorney about whether to plead the Fifth during the upcoming Congressional probe. Starr's thoughts harken back first to distant ancestor Jared Start, Virginian farmer and signer of the Declaration of Independence, whose support of a strong federation propelled his son, Simon, to attend the Constitutional Convention and to sign the new document after meetings with Ben Franklin, James Madison, etc. (detailed in snippets from Simon's diary). Thus the Starrs march through US history—a Supreme Court Judge, suffragette, and war hero among them—all intimately involved with the Constitution as it evolves, is amended and reamended. And so it is that at novel's end Norman Starr, bathed in his family's Constitutional splendor, disregards his attorney's advice to plead the Fifth: for in "a blinding flash" he realizes that his job is to protect the nation, not himself, and that "that superb document will be effective only if each new generation believes in it—and keeps it renewed." Michener packs an impressive amount of historical drama into this slim novel while avoiding his usual textbook pedagogy (although the work is padded out at the end via inclusion of the entire Constitution); and if some readers will find Starr/Michener's flag-waving a tough pill to swallow ("the free world must not sit back and let the Reds run rampant"), many (500,000 first printing) will enjoy Michener's birthday present to the Constitution on its bicentennial.
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1987
ISBN: 0749319747
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987
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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