Deeply atmospheric, impressively learned, endlessly suggestive: it won’t mean much, though, to readers who haven’t wrestled...
Historian Pierce Moffett’s ongoing scholarly obsession with “magic, secret histories, and the End of the World” is depicted in ever darkening hues—in the forbiddingly dense third volume of Crowley’s ambitious Aegypt Quartet (Aegypt, 1987; Love and Sleep, 1994).
As before, the action is set both in the remote upstate New York town of Blackbury Jambs and in memories of rural Kentucky and a heritage of violence—a legacy the reclusive Pierce is still trying to escape. Furthermore, the present narrative is mirrored in excerpts from the bizarre children’s books of Fellowes Kraft, as well as from Pierce’s research (inspired by Kraft) into the histories of the 16th-century philosophers “heretic” Giordano Bruno and English scientist-mystic John Dee, whose “dealings with the spirits” (a form of the “daemonomania” that grips Pierce) may have awakened dark forces that threaten overweening mortals. These potent materials easily upstage a comparatively wan contemporary story that centers in Pierce’s confused relationships with two women named Rose (who may be Platonic halves of a single feminine figure), a little girl named Sam who suffers inexplicable seizures and may be a “sensitive” attuned to unearthly harmonies, and the menacing Powerhouse International cult. Though its surface is refreshingly lucid, this overstuffed novel turns on a “plot” that’s really a series of episodic variations on the Aegypt Quartet’s commanding theme: that a “secret history” grasped by only a few humans underlies the world we think we know, and directs our actions. Dreams and foreshadowings, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, the kabala, astrology, Neoplatonism, and many other skillfully assimilated sources and influences suffuse a narrative likewise steeped in grand mythic resonances—as a childless mother becomes Demeter seeking Persephone, and Pierce both a subdued Faust and a chastened Prospero resigned to the necessity of “burning his books.”
Deeply atmospheric, impressively learned, endlessly suggestive: it won’t mean much, though, to readers who haven’t wrestled with its equally demanding predecessors. Crowley’s work is a taste well worth acquiring, but you have to work at it.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-553-10004-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
