Full of dazzling set pieces and flights of urban fancy, Wideman's first novel since his award-winning Sent For You Yesterday never quite coheres—it's a sprawling meditation on "the evil men do to their fellow men," and what holds it (tenuously) together is the "tired old Uncle Remus man" celebrated in the title. A hunchbacked homunculus, Reuben serves the Homewood section of Pittsburgh as a one-man legal-aid society. Decorous and eloquent, this tiny black man works from an old trailer, not much concerned with his clients' ability to pay. With his prodigious memory and mastery of government bureaucracy, Reuben delivers, even though, as we find out much later, his legal education—tricked from the frat boys he once served—doesn't make him a proper lawyer. He's a dreamer who dreams of ancient Egypt, African journeys, and conversations with the dead; he's a man "compulsively rehearsing his own life." Clients' stories break through his reveries: of Kwansa Parker, a whore of sorts, who's accused of being an unfit mother to her boy, Cudjoe; of Wally, a travelling college basketball recruiter, who confesses to killing white men in strange cities (or is it a fantasy of "abstract hate"?), and who tells the story of his friend, Bimbo, a popular soul crooner, crippled from the waist down in a car wreck (shades of Teddy Pendergrass). For every story listened to, Reuben has his own, including a breathtaking tale of sorrow and beauty from his tortured past. Different styles of rage and revenge animate these ghetto-based lives, each of which finds an apposite narrative voice. The elaborate dream-play and interiorized speechifying make for occasional confusion and excess. Otherwise, a truly luminous creation.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1987
ISBN: 2070732347
Page Count: 253
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1987
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
© 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.
