A sensitive work from a very promising author.
In Zokan’s debut novel, the members of an American Baptist missionary family in Cali, Colombia, confront some surprising secrets.
Teenager Josie Wales, the kid sister of Aaron and the daughter of Henry and Astrid, narrates this story of a fateful summer in the family’s lives. It’s 1976, Josie is soon to enter her junior year of high school, and Aaron, his senior year. The season’s first bombshell hits when Josie discovers that her father’s mysterious errands are to see and support a woman with whom he secretly fathered a child. Henry is contrite, and he and Astrid try to work through the situation. The other woman, Samara, then tricks them into taking care of the baby, whose name is Piedad Maria. If the mission hierarchy finds out that the child is Henry’s, he could lose his position, which would put the family back in the United States, adrift. Then a second bombshell goes off, involving Astrid, which shakes the family to its roots. Josie’s only confidante is young Blanca, a Colombian housekeeper, and the teen begins to flirt with Catholicism. To her parents, this nascent apostasy is morally worse than what they’ve done—even though sneaky, unpleasant Aaron is hardly a model child. As Josie navigates her family situation, she deals with typical, young-love issues with her boyfriend. Overall, this is an offbeat coming-of-age story, albeit a brutal one, and Josie is perfect in her role as the story’s protagonist and moral center. Zokan effectively shows how the teenager heroically tries to make things right and to get her family members to stop their denial and hypocritical behavior—and they are revealed to be very ugly Americans indeed. The reader aches for a happier ending, as Henry, Astrid, and Aaron appear to have learned nothing, satisfying themselves that somehow all their misfortunes were Josie’s fault. Intriguingly, however, they haven’t ostracized the protagonist at all—they’ve liberated her.
A sensitive work from a very promising author.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-940215-80-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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