A densely packed story with plenty to savor for readers of any faith or none at all.
Lynch’s latest thriller (The 2020 Players, 2011, etc.) follows a series of people in the aftermath of two apparently isolated shootings.
In Tampa, Fla., a crazed man goes on a killing spree at a university campus. That same day, a doctor overseeing a new abortion clinic is murdered in a parking lot. As detectives and a reporter search for a connection between the two events, different people slowly come into the frame, including “Patch” Munson, an Alabama farmer who confesses to killing the doctor. Some of the story’s players even come together to find a missing woman during a hurricane. In this complex novel, religion is more than just a theme; it serves as a catalyst, connecting and repelling characters. For instance, Father Hanlon’s leaving the priesthood scares Patch into believing his confession will be revealed, which leads to Patch kidnapping Hanlon’s lover, Carol. It’s not just Christianity that seeps into the story: A blind scientist is an atheist, and Julianne, a computer saleswoman, considers herself to be a “seeker,” a spiritualist who follows no organized religion. Lynch doesn’t tip his hand by siding with any creed; instead, he criticizes and praises each one, frequently through debates between Julianne and “Hawk” Richter, the atheist. On the other hand, phonetic renderings of a Southern drawl from the likes of Patch and Rev. Billy Brand can be excessive and distracting, with cryptic words such as “decahded” (decided) and “reignahte” (reignite). The narrative also tends to be a bit wordy, typically in the form of superfluous adverbs—a professor can “visually see” the shooter, a touch is “paradoxically both soft and firm,” and a blind man “blindly” reaches. But Lynch also includes peculiar dualities for readers to ponder: a priest learns he has a son; a sermon inspires a shooting; and the death of the campus shooter isn’t considered murder, but killing a man who condones abortions is. Near the book’s end, as detectives, Hanlon and others desperately search for Carol, the hurricane casts a dark shadow that only intensifies the hunt.
A densely packed story with plenty to savor for readers of any faith or none at all.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615758220
Page Count: 424
Publisher: ERE Publications
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2013
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
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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