Lightweight fare—just right for the YA market—but an amiable addition to coming-out fiction.
An appealing, if slight, novel of coming out of the closet in the ’80s, from Babcock (The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers, 2005).
What distinguishes this work and infuses it with charm is the age of our hero, Andy. Coming-of-age tales typically involve a teen filled with all the usual demons and angst, self-loathing and cynicism. But Andy is just turning 12, and is too much of an innocent for any kind of existential reflection. This is the novel’s saving grace: Andy’s genuine goofiness and naïveté ring so true it’s impossible to dislike him. Andy is sure that sixth grade will be the best year of his life. And why not? He has everybody’s favorite teacher, Sister Mary Kelly, and he’s in love with Mark Saddle, athletic, beautiful and part of the in-crowd. Andy shamelessly tries to move up the popularity ladder to get closer to Mark, but it’s a long climb from the bottom rung, where he lingers with his old best friend, James. Effeminate, lisping James, whom everyone at school calls a “faggot,” can’t understand why Andy is now joining in on the name-calling, especially since the two spend their sleepovers playing sex games. Andy feels sorry for James, but his sense of self-preservation is greater than his adolescent loyalty. James sits alone at lunch, is beat up by Andy’s new “friends” and continues with his passion—drawing epic portraits of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Wishes come true as Andy is suspiciously befriended by Mark, who invites the hopelessly inept boy to practice basketball one-on-one at his house. Meanwhile, Andy the budding writer is working on his third novel, featuring Beverly, who, oddly enough, is in love with a boy named Mark. Andy’s novel-in-progress, his prayers to Jesus to keep him from being a gay weirdo and his complex friendship with James, hit just the right note. Andy is neither the wise child nor a noble symbol for discrimination; he’s just a likable kid coming to terms with his homosexuality.
Lightweight fare—just right for the YA market—but an amiable addition to coming-out fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1647-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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