Goldstein (All That Matters, 2004) delivers a companionable story, though the do-the-right-thing ending is just what one...
A well-intentioned melodrama in which a manipulative lothario becomes a sincere and sensitive man.
Teddy Mathison, a charming, handsome lawyer, is using those qualities in his bid for the U.S. Senate. Thanks to his hard-as-nails campaign manager Judith (with whom he occasionally has sex in the back of the limo), chances are good he’ll be representing California very soon. The only problem is his family values numbers are a bit low— divorced and barely speaking to his teenage daughter doesn’t sit well with the voters. Luckily, his mother is about to die, or at least lucky is how Judith sees it. Strong-armed by his sister, Teddy agrees to spend a week in Nantucket with the indomitable Kate Mathison, who is rapidly succumbing to the effects of Alzheimer’s. He hasn’t seen her in years, and his daughter Zoe, with whom he has scheduled time for the next few weeks, has never met her. But Judith is insisting on a family photo to release to the press. When Teddy arrives, Kate’s behavior swings from icy to addled, while Zoe only removes her iPod to insult her father. Then long-time family friend Frank gives Teddy a letter that softens his perspective—Teddy discovers that the father he idolized was really quite a cad and committed suicide. He reevaluates his relationship with his mother, most of which is built on childish misunderstandings, and comes to appreciate her for the feisty, brilliant artist she is. But that leaves Zoe, who is discovered cutting herself, and Liza, an island resident he feels a deep connection to, but who has baggage of her own. While Judith is demanding Teddy return to California, Teddy considers his many failings with the women in his life, and begins to mend his wicked ways, though his transformation to doting father and son seems a bit too easily made.
Goldstein (All That Matters, 2004) delivers a companionable story, though the do-the-right-thing ending is just what one would expect from a novel with few surprises.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-34590-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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