Green’s 12th novel (Dune Road, 2009, etc.), so intent on a sort-of-happy ending, misses the mark.
Green’s latest summer novel is an uneasy mix of girly romance and cancer.
Once upon a time there were two sisters: Callie has a house in the country, two kids, a dreamy husband and a growing career as a photographer. Steffi is an up-and-coming vegan chef in New York, has a rock-star boyfriend and a charmingly irresponsible life. But because she’s deadly bored with the city (and her boyfriend and her job), Steffi decides to accept the generous offer of acquaintance Mason Gregory. While he and his filthy rich wife Olivia are in London for a year, Steffi will dog sit Fingal at their country house, which happens to be close to Callie’s place. Steffi loves the country, loves feeding the chickens and the goats, loves the quiet of the beautiful house and the little business she’s beginning, supplying healthy food to the town. But most importantly, she’s there for Callie, whose splitting headache has developed into a hospital stay, which leads to the diagnosis of terminal cancer. Their parents (who have been divorced for 30 years and never speak) come down from Maine; Callie’s driven husband Reece does the unthinkable—stops working to look after the children he barely knows; and best friend Lila becomes an advocate for Callie, navigating the family through the nightmare of her illness. An effervescent soul, Callie wants to live through her loved ones, and soon the fractured lives of those she cares about begin to come together, just as Callie lies dying. Green’s sad story (the novel is inspired by a close friend who died) seems more of a catalyst for romance and positive life change rather than a drama, resulting in an emotionally disjointed read.
Green’s 12th novel (Dune Road, 2009, etc.), so intent on a sort-of-happy ending, misses the mark.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02179-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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
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