This collection takes on the family from within and without, in ways one might expect and others totally unanticipated, for...
An anthology on the theme of family finds essays, fiction, poetry, and photography that examine the concept broadly but precisely.
Former Granta editor Freeman draws from a global cache of talent. Patrick Modiano writes about the shame he feels after exacting some short-term revenge on his abusive parents, an impulse that causes unforeseen consequences. Ruddy Roye’s photo series, “When Living Is a Protest,” captures scenes in the day-to-day existence of black men. Roye writes, “I don’t know if there has ever been a time when a black man has ceased to be a commodity,” drawing parallels between slavery and professional sports, artists, and the imprisoned. While many focus on their own families, Alexander Chee describes a catering gig for a wealthy client: an elderly woman in a wheelchair was confronted by family members, one of them dressed like “an Upper East Side Charo—wearing the very best in platform cork wedges,” who pulled her from her chair and tried unsuccessfully to wrestle her out of the mink coat she capably clung to while being repeatedly body-slammed on a nearby bed. Sandra Cisneros memorializes a series of lovers in a poem that is by turns hilarious, tender, and anatomically specific. Valeria Luiselli’s “Tell Me How It Ends” begins with her waiting for a green card, but this long-form essay is ultimately about the mass deportation of children back to Mexico and Central America, taking a hard look at the impact U.S. policy is having on kids who have no other prospects than to risk everything trying to cross the border.
This collection takes on the family from within and without, in ways one might expect and others totally unanticipated, for an expansive reading experience.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2526-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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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