A well-written, thoughtful debut with wide crossover potential. Inclán never condescends and never judges, preferring to let...
A 17-year-old high-schooler gives birth, with no one to help but her even younger sister: the first in NAL’s new line of women’s fiction.
No one seems to notice the pregnancy—not Kate Phillips’s teachers and certainly not her father Davis, who spends most of his free time with his girlfriend Hannah and her two young boys, stopping by his old house only occasionally. Seeing his own teenaged daughters only reminds Davis of their mother, Deirdre, a vibrant, much-loved, much-missed woman who recently died of breast cancer. His wife’s friends have given up asking after Kate and Tyler, despite their concerns—not that Kate minds. She’s never been the talkative type, and her cheerleader sister Tyler, 15, has been sworn to secrecy. The girls prepare for everything, combing through thrift stores and resale shops to provide a layette for the baby Kate is determined to deliver at home, without a doctor or midwife. They also study birthing books and videos, although the possibility of complications makes Tyler increasingly uneasy. But together the two manage to bring the baby into the world despite many hours of difficult labor. The exhausted young mother nurses her newborn daughter, whom she names Deirdre, and the sisters get her settled in an improvised nursery they’ve set up in a closet. Meanwhile, they attend school in shifts, rarely leaving the baby alone for more than an hour at a time. But the infant’s crying gives the girls away at last. Kate and Tyler are immediately placed in foster care, the baby is taken away (temporarily), and their father is forced to defend himself on charges of abandonment.
A well-written, thoughtful debut with wide crossover potential. Inclán never condescends and never judges, preferring to let her subtly drawn people speak for themselves. The understanding portrayal of her teenaged heroines—stubborn, careless, and fiercely honest—is remarkably astute.Pub Date: May 8, 2001
ISBN: 0-451-20282-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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