Memory, contrition, love and loss all permeate this thoughtful contemplation on the generation of radical adolescents that...
The spectacular rise and dizzying fall of a legendary Spanish desperado.
Memory, contrition, love and loss all permeate this thoughtful contemplation on the generation of radical adolescents that emerged in Spain in its post-Franco years. With an autobiographical air, Cercas (The Anatomy of a Moment, 2011, etc.) crafts a vibrant yet realistic portrait of two teenage boys who find themselves in very different circumstances in adulthood. The voice of the novel comes from Ignacio Cañas, a retired criminal defense lawyer who is being interviewed by an unnamed journalist about his early relationship with a charismatic criminal, Antonio Gamallo, who is known to Spain as “El Zarco.” In the book’s first half, we learn how the bookish, fainthearted Cañas falls in with the blue-eyed Zarco and his exotic female companion, Tere, in the late 1970s. Their deal is based around a simple bargain: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” The drug-fueled, rebellious trio soon graduates from burglary to robbing banks. When Cañas is freed by a sympathetic police officer named Inspector Cuenca, it sets him on a different path than his felonious friends. A quarter-century later, Tere reappears in his office with María Vela, Zarco’s girlfriend, with a plea for Cañas to lead the outlaw’s defense. It’s a compelling, drawn-out story with rich period detail and emotional depth. The first half has the flavor of Jim Carroll’s post-punk autobiographical novels, while the chronicle of Zarco’s criminal career recalls the many books and films about French gangster Jacques Mesrine. It’s also hard not to feel the swirl of emotions experienced by Cañas as he wrestles with his feelings about his childhood friend and the long attraction he's held for Tere, whose role in keeping Zarco’s secrets leaves her largely at arm’s length from the rest of the world. It’s unusual for a story about popular folklore to be so grounded, but Cercas navigates this difficult maneuver with grace. A rewarding and complex novel about finding the man behind the myths.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62040-325-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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