Hard-bitten, yet surprisingly moving.
Another brooding and violent tale from Blake (Handsome Harry, 2004, etc.), this one about the boxer best known for almost besting Jack Johnson.
That was in 1909, and the opening chapter shows Ketchel’s and Johnson’s managers agreeing that the match will be a fake, staged to end in a draw so the fighters can make their real money on the rematch. Blake pulls no punches in his portrait of Ketchel, who comes across right away as a bigot and misogynist, offended by Johnson caressing his “bitch” white girlfriend. The story recalls the bleak work of such writers of the period as Stephen Crane and Frank Norris in its stark delineation of Stanley’s abusive father and the boy’s hardscrabble years as a hobo. (His first killing is a fellow vagrant who tries to rape him.) The level of violence only increases as Ketchel discovers his ability with his fists in Butte, Mont., where he makes his reputation inflicting maximum physical punishment—lavishly described—on anyone foolish enough to get into the ring with him. He’s left with even more rage to vent when his one true love shoots herself rather than suffer to the death with throat cancer. It’s all pretty grim, and despite the story’s compulsive readability, it seems for a while that what we’re being given is merely an exercise in sordid naturalism. But Blake slowly and skillfully softens our perception of Ketchel just enough so we can see his yearning for love and his passionate commitment to boxing. “Goddamit, you’re the greatest fighter I ever saw,” he finally admits to Johnson. Racism doesn’t stand a chance against the truth of what Ketchel experiences in the ring. Blinkered and brutal though he is, we begin to hope that Stanley will grow up and find some peace. But the author has warned us from the start that his flawed hero will meet a tragic end.
Hard-bitten, yet surprisingly moving.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-055436-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
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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