Serious modern fiction has only one subject: the difficulty of writing serious modern fiction." So says Fowles' alter-ego here. And, if that idea was an undercurrent in The French Lieutenant's Woman (the time-shift narrative tricks) and Daniel Martin (the writer-as-tortured-hero), Fowles is now offering it in undiluted form: this new novel chiefly consists of existential dialogues between a writer and his Muse—along with some Pirandello-ish gamesplaying and an erotic battle-of-the-sexes. Miles Green wakes up in a hospital bed, apparently afflicted with amnesia; soon a lovely doctor and a sexy nurse are matter-of-factly administering therapeutic sex to the outraged patient. What's going on? Is this a farce à la Thomas Berger (with dialogue by Pinter)? Well, not exactly. Because the doctor is suddenly transformed into Erato, Muse of love-poetry and fiction: the hospital scene, you see, was just one of Miles' literary notions. So Miles and his tetchy, pouting Muse then launch into some comic/philosophical discussions, with time-outs for brawling and bedding. The feminist Muse attacks Miles' work; she demands respect ("All I ask is some minimal recognition of my metaphysical status vis-à -vis yours"); she recalls her early days with the Nine Muses ("It was worse than being the Rolling Stones"); she makes suggestions about Miles' career; she confesses to having written the Odyssey. Miles responds with lectures on the modern novel. And, throughout, the tussle between writer and Muse is interwoven with the sexual struggle between Man and Woman: teasing, spats, fights, and—after some more transformation games—happy lovemaking. Fowles, of course, executes his "mantissa" (O.E.D., "an addition of comparatively small importance") with vast erudition and lovely prose bits. But the less characteristic comedy is uneven—from sublime to sophomoric. (Erato confuses lung with Erica Jong.) And, however richly executed, this remains an overextended intellectual vaudeville-sketch—alternately fascinating and tedious, with distinctly special, limited appeal.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1982
ISBN: 0316290270
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1982
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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