Literary satire finds redemption as a character ruled by his genitals discovers he has a heart.
A very funny novel that gets darker and goes deeper as it progresses.
Farce teeters toward tragedy in this novel about an Irish author who long ago enjoyed a critical and popular breakthrough with an international best-seller. He has since sold his services to the highest Hollywood bidder while indulging his voracious appetites without moral compunction. Then he finds himself at the juncture of unlikely coincidence—just as he learns that he is in serious American tax trouble, he receives an extraordinarily generous teaching fellowship in Britain, which he initially resists at least partly because the faculty also includes one of his ex-wives. Protagonist Kennedy Marr is a familiar character, a literary scoundrel who retains his charm; even he acknowledges, in a serious turn, that “he was the most awful, dread cliché: the middle-aged novelist trying to come to terms with his own mortality.” Where it initially seems that Niven (The Second Coming, 2012, etc.) might not have much to offer beyond some hearty laughter (there’s an episode about multitasking with pornography, and ruining another laptop in the process, that is particularly slapstick), the novel turns into an argument about just what a novel—and a life—should be. “The purpose of art is to delight. Not to enlighten. Not to teach,” Kennedy insists, before he develops into a character who proves teachable, if not enlightened. He recognizes that he hasn’t been much of a father to his teenage daughter or son to his dying mother, that at least one of his marriages might have enriched his life if he’d taken it more seriously, and that he has squandered most of life on “another set of sensations to throw in the face of the abyss.” His escapades with an actress, a student and whoever else is handy lead unexpectedly to a climax that is deliriously ambitious and richly satisfying.
Literary satire finds redemption as a character ruled by his genitals discovers he has a heart.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2303-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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