A likable, pragmatic protagonist comes of age in a comprehensively detailed, chaotic period in history.
An adolescent boy develops a political ideology during Ireland’s tumultuous Troubles in Benacre’s (Shape, Shine and Shadow, 2016, etc.) latest short story collection.
After the opening tale, “God’s People,” a discussion between prospective British MI5 agents, narrator Neill McCormac dives into an account of his life in the very next story, “What’s in a Name?” Growing up near Newry, Ireland, in what he calls the “border heartland of the Provisional IRA,” he gets an early introduction to the violence of the Troubles. His mother believes she’s cursed, as each of her children has been born on the same day that a bomb or bullet devastated lives. In “Fence Posts & Milestones,” the 10-year-old McCormac’s rather brutal fight with some other boys is upstaged when word gets out that he uttered anti–IRA remarks at school. Puberty makes it mark, as well, as he recognizes his unmistakable attraction to Aunt Úna, his mom’s younger sister; in one of the book’s best stories, “Flat Shoes and High Hopes,” he and Úna have no choice but to discuss this infatuation when they’re alone at his brother’s wedding. In “...From Little Acorns Grow,” McCormac’s college dissertation on the procurement of Provisional Irish Republican Army weapons so impresses Capt. Eric Lawrence of the British Army’s HQ Northern Ireland that he offers him a job, only half-jokingly. This ultimately leads McCormac to MI5, where he chases Michael McCann, the suspected IRA terrorist and the protagonist of Benacre’s earlier work. The author’s depiction of the historical backdrop is profound, with McCormac moving from being a witness (perusing his mother’s scrapbook of bombings, for example) to being a part of the Security Service. At times, the historical events overshadow McCormac’s sometimes-conventional childhood; for example, he acknowledges that the loss of his virginity, which happened the same night as the 1996 IRA bombing of the London Docklands, was “fairly unremarkable.” That said, the book still makes a worthy counterpart to the first volume, which centers on McCann and his decidedly more savage youth. Like that collection, this one is truly a novel in disguise; an author’s note suggests reading the stories sequentially, and certain tales’ callbacks to earlier characters or incidents make this a necessity.
A likable, pragmatic protagonist comes of age in a comprehensively detailed, chaotic period in history.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5377-3059-2
Page Count: 420
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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