Eerie, entertaining tales whose recurring themes and characters make them stronger.
Vampires, otherworldly creatures, and human killers populate Lee’s debut collection of horror and suspense stories.
In the opening story, “Devil Beneath,” Marion hears scratching sounds and thuds from the crawl space under her house, as if something were trying to make its way aboveground. This is the essence of Lee’s book, brimming with stories that are refreshingly subtle while often hinting at the supernatural. The titular beast in “Closet Monster,” for example, torments 7-year-old Jeremy with glimpses of its talons and eyes in the blackness of night. Similarly, David becomes a captive while on an Alaskan trip in “Northern Lights,” a straightforward story that’s chilling even before its preternatural twist at the end. Nevertheless, humans prove just as creepy, as in “Snowball’s Chance,” in which Samuel Piejak and police officers search for his daughter, Coleen, who readers know has already been taken by someone unhinged. Disturbed individuals also highlight “The Tale” and “The Field,” stories that, despite their misleadingly humdrum titles, are delightfully ambiguous (i.e., there might be a supernatural element to explain what’s been taking place). In the book’s best story, “King of the Road,” hateful white-collar worker Jerry McIntyre slowly develops road rage on his commute to and from the office. But unlike other drivers, Jerry, giving in to his interstate fury, somehow finds a way to clear the road of unsafe motorists who’d dare occupy his lane. It’s undoubtedly satire but manages to be simultaneously wry and bizarre, if not outright terrifying. Some stories in Lee’s book are connected by characters who crop up more than once, which can enhance the narrative. It’s particularly unsettling, for instance, when one man, who doesn’t survive his initial appearance, is alive in the very next story. The strongest link involves the final tale, which follows Lester, Marion’s missing husband from the first story—alternate perspectives that serve as fascinating bookends.
Eerie, entertaining tales whose recurring themes and characters make them stronger.Pub Date: July 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9966058-0-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: 2nd Sight LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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