Gardner surrenders his license for James Bond-ing to package a multi-generational saga about the Railtons, a spy family synonymous with British Intelligence and Security, whose undercover exploits herein stretch from 1909 to 1935 and who dash wonderfully about most of the civilized world. When General Sir William Arthur Railton VC KCB DSO, who made reconnaissance, fought and was wounded at the battle of Balaclava, dies in 1909, he leaves his inheritance to his son John rather than to his brother Giles, the family's wiliest and very deserving eldest member. Resolutely, Giles sets out like a Grand Master to navigate the family through this crisis. First off, Giles engineers John's younger brother Charles' befuddled transfer from the Diplomatic Service to Military Operations 5 (MO5), the newly born British Intelligence, staffed so far by only one officer and his clerk. This is the organization meant to weld Britain's espionage activities into one formidable force. But already the Fenians are penetrating the Railton family through Malcolm Railton's wife Bridget, from Dublin, while Gustav Steinhauer, new head of the Kaiser's vast spy system, is set on fulfilling Wilhelm's vision of the German Imperial Navy—and not Britannia—as master of the great oceans. All of the Railtons, of whom there are many, sooner or later wind up in Intelligence of one sort or another, even the wives, though Giles' family does not know of his full involvement in the purchase of British shares in the new Suez Canal, his dark works in India and Egypt, his secret sessions with the new revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky. And yet it is Giles, who in the evening of his life, embraces a foreign ideology—has a personal Road-to-Damascus revelation about the power and wealth he was born into—and becomes through horrific betrayal "the first of the really great modern traitors." This is Gardner at his best. Here his quick brilliance at characterization and incredible density of anecdote and plot are far superior in tale-spinning elan to his strong start then fading interest in three appearances as Ian Fleming's glamorous ghost. The Railtons are his chef-d'oeuvre in the arts of melodrama, delicious in their adaptability to the varied countries they pass through, marvelously Byzantine as they begin spying on each other as well as on their enemies. A dynasty this strongly established is sure to return.
Pub Date: Nov. 21, 1985
ISBN: 0552124885
Page Count: 541
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1985
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
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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