A methodically paced thriller, strengthened by resourceful characters.
In McKoy’s (Paying to Play in Hong Kong, 2009) adventure, a philanthropist attempts to rescue a loved one after one of his projects disrupts a Guatemalan revolutionary’s drug traffic.
Roberto Prettyman, a native of Guatemala City, immigrated to the United States in 1958, when he was 5. Now, in 2005, he feels disconnected to his Washington, D.C., immigrant community, and he decides to sell his real estate company. He plans to use his wealth to start a foundation, the Quetzal Fund, and help young Central American immigrants with job training and placement. He offers his first grant to Marta Hernandez, the CEO of La Puerta Abierta, an “after-school music, art, dance, and exercise facility.” Surprisingly, the growth of Marta’s program disturbs Guatemalan rebel leader Felix Gigante (aka “the Jaguar Paw”), as it’s causing a drop in his drug sales in D.C. Then Felix orders the kidnapping of Roberto’s 20-something nephew, Raúl Gonzales, who briefly lived with his uncle a few years ago. This forces Roberto to travel to Guatemala, where Felix takes him captive as well; it’s all part of his plan to shut down La Puerta Abierta for good. The abductees contemplate escape, but if they do so, they’ll have to traverse a blistering hot jungle as they try to find a way to contact friends and family. There’s plenty of political discourse in McKoy’s novel, and the rich dialogue smartly examines issues of social change. For example, the book compares how the philanthropist and the violent revolutionary both seek to aid youth in their respective countries. These conversations do, however, often take precedence over action scenes, of which there are very few. Still, McKoy provides his characters with comprehensive back stories, noting, for instance, that Roberto has an ex-wife, Mónica Sanchez, a Cuban immigrant with a cosmetic dermatology practice in Miami. Their adult daughter, Lisa Prettyman, spearheads the search for her missing father, teaming up with her mom and Alice Brown, Roberto’s executive assistant at Quetzal. It’s quite refreshing to see a thriller in which women work to rescue captive men.
A methodically paced thriller, strengthened by resourceful characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5246-0727-2
Page Count: 266
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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