A poignant exploration of a timely political topic.
In Klepper’s debut novel, a stay-at-home mom longing for greater purpose returns to work as a pro bono lawyer and finds herself representing a Syrian refugee seeking asylum.
Jessica Donnelly worked as a high-priced corporate lawyer for a white-shoe firm but walked away from her career in order to raise her three children. Ten years later, she feels unfulfilled, especially as she watches her husband’s career bloom. She decides to return to work as a volunteer for the International Asylum Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting refugees seeking safety in America from political persecution and war. Jessica takes Amina Hamid’s case. Two years ago, Amina fled the violent tumult of Syria to stay with relatives in Baltimore. She’s reluctant to accept Jessica as her lawyer—her previous lawyer was uselessly incompetent, and she’s unimpressed by Jessica’s complete lack of experience. Jessica convinces Amina to give her a shot, but the odds are heavily stacked against asylum seekers, and Amina is painfully reticent when it comes to revealing the details of her flight from Aleppo, information necessary for Jessica to mount a successful case. Slowly, Amina discloses the horrifying truth—soldiers murdered her younger brother, attacked her mother, tortured her father, and her husband simply vanished one day—a gruesome tableau affectingly described by Klepper. Jessica tries to help not only win Amina asylum, but also find a job, and both encounter shrill prejudice that sometimes crescendos into violence. The author sensitively captures the anxiety the nation experiences regarding immigration from countries plagued by anti-Western extremism; Jessica’s husband, Danny, an educated man who works in cybersecurity, surprises her with the depths of his skepticism. Also, Klepper artfully depicts the ways even the quotidian aspects of life can be challenging for the radically displaced: When Amina is asked to provide her college transcripts as part of a job application, she tersely replies: “No. I... I do not know that I can get a transcript sent. There’s a war.”
A poignant exploration of a timely political topic.Pub Date: July 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948051-11-8
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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