A memorable depiction of an emerging writer exploring the many prisms of her voice.
In this debut novel, a middle-aged woman explores past lives and present tensions in emails to her daughter.
“I was Sha Li, a priestess of the highest order, a worshipper of Kuan Yin, goddess of compassion and mercy.” So begins the first of many notes, via email, that Grace Heronheart drafted (and mostly sent) to Alyce, her college-aged, eldest daughter, just after Grace quit her 20-year job as a school psychologist in rural West Virginia. After noting that “our families probably think that I lost my marbles,” Grace tells Alyce that she’s actually “finding my rainbow colored, multifaceted marbles” by pursing her dream of being a writer. She provides her daughter with everyday-life updates, particularly regarding Alyce’s disapproving father; she also shares the story of her past incarnation as the aforementioned Sha Li, a secondary wife of a Chinese warrior. She tells tales of other past lives, such as Zete, a “dark-skinned” tribal “prophetess,” and Mourning Dove, a Native American who fell in love with a trapper. Along the way, Grace details the roles that Alyce and the rest of her present-day family played in these past existences. By novel’s end, she tells her daughter that she’s come to the conclusion that “I only write my own script. I cannot write anyone else’s,” and embarks on “a new adventure, and a new beginning.” First-time author Furst has written an engaging tale of midlife awakening that reads like a memoir even as it skillfully deploys past-life metaphors. Grace’s missives combine the relatable tone of a typical email from a mom (such as when she applauds Alyce’s choice in boyfriend) with striking tableaux of imagined lives. Sha Li’s tale is particularly poignant and reminiscent of the works of Amy Tan and Jung Chang. It’s rather ambitious to cover three past lives and a conflict-ridden present, however, and the “P.S.” about Grace’s modern-day decision comes as a rather abrupt bombshell. Overall, though, Furst effectively sketches a character that lives out her assertion that “sanctuary can be found in all my rainbow stories.”
A memorable depiction of an emerging writer exploring the many prisms of her voice.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-4707-5
Page Count: 298
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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