A jumpy and complex spy puzzle—scooting back and forth between 1941 and 1978—that's pretty darn good but should perhaps have been a great deal better; one often has the feeling with the prolific John Gardner (The Werewolf Trance) that a really first-rate spy novel would emerge if he'd only give it enough time to grow. The contrived shenanigans here begin in 1978 when a middle-aged German woman appears in London, inquiring about the grave of her husband—a Nazi spy allegedly executed during World War II. But Herbie Kruger of British Intelligence, who sees this frau as a potential recruit for his new European espionage network, finds no record of such a Nazi spy—till he digs out some old top-security Fries about Operation Nostradamus, a WW II plan to create dissension among Nazi bigwigs by playing on their belief in the occult soothsayings of 16th-century seer Michel de Nostradame. Herbie, determined to ferret out the frau's complete background, enlists the help of a survivor of Op Nostradamus, now a top man at British Intelligence, who agrees to recall the whole 1941 operation (his first) in detail. Thus the recurring flashbacks—about the young British agent's arrival in France, about his passionate affair with a Resistance mademoiselle, and about the occult-spreading mission and how it somehow escalated into an assassination attempt on Himmler deep in Germany. Meanwhile, back in 1978, someone's trying to kill the frau; and the link between past and present turns out to be a winner indeed—the sort of gnarled fabric that Le Carre would have fine-stitched into a dark, rich tapestry. With Gardner, however, one admires the cleverness but winds up wondering why the book that leads up to it—except for big, slow, Mahler-loving Herbie, who's a dandily downbeat hero-never settles down and takes hold. Still: yards above the run of the espionage mill.
Pub Date: May 25, 1979
ISBN: 0553141457
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979
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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