A philosophical story about fears to which no beating heart is immune.
Bright lights in a big city herald the return of the dead in Swedish horrorist Lindqvist’s second novel, after Let the Right One In (2007), a vampire tale that was later turned into a movie.
This time the author replaces vampires with zombies, a switch that effectively accents his expressive, unnerving writing. In the process he offers a unique and humanistic take on the undead that has a place alongside thoughtful horror novels like World War Z. The story begins in Stockholm with a subtle natural phenomenon. The country, deep in its winter twilight, experiences a collective headache that threatens to drive its sufferers mad. Next, the city is struck by a massive short circuit, a reverse blackout that powers up every appliance. Then Lindqvist introduces his cast: David, a stand-up comedian and loving husband; Mahler, a suicidal journalist who mourns the untimely death of his grandson Elias; and Elvy and her granddaughter Flora, quietly acknowledging the new telepathy that has emerged between them. When the dead do come back, the book delivers believable terror. The most disquieting scenes come early. David rushes to the hospital, where his beloved wife Eva has died in a car accident. As he cries with despair, his wife suddenly grasps his hand, opens one gruesome dead eye and croaks his name. Anyone who can drop off to sleep after this passage has nerves of steel. After photographing a newly reanimated morgue, Mahler rushes to his grandson’s grave, where he disinters the child’s body and carries the desiccated corpse home to bathe it. What’s interesting about what follows is the way that it’s handled—not with Romero-esque sarcasm and blood-spattering gunplay, but with sincere reflection on what would happen if the dead arose. How would the government respond? What does it mean to be human if death is not the end? And perhaps most importantly, how would we feel if those we loved and lost were suddenly returned to us?
A philosophical story about fears to which no beating heart is immune.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-60525-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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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