G-R-R-I-S-L-Y...by the author of A Splendid Chaos (1988). Horrible as this is, it has redeeming values, one being its warning against addictive pleasures and too much partying. When down-at-heels screenwriter Tom Prentice identifies his ex-wife Amy in the morgue, she's 50 pounds underweight and mutilated. Then when Prentice pitches a banal cop-show to studio head Arthwright, Arthwright is oddly not dismissive of the dumb idea. As we later find out, Arthwright is a kind of astral vampire. Meanwhile, Reverend Garner, a recovering doper/alcoholic who runs a ministry in Oakland, finds that his teenage daughter Constance is missing. She's been kidnapped by Ephram Pixie, a ghoul with astral ties who turns Constance into a pleasure addict by psychic pressure on her pleasure-center brain cells. Ephram likes to have Constance enjoy sex in his presence while she murders folks in nasty ways in motel rooms. Mitch Teitelbaum, the missing young brother of Tom's roommate Jeff, turns up in a hospital after deliberately laying bare his chest muscles and slitting open his leg, among other enjoyable self-injuries, after a strange party. With echoes of The Shining, this all-continuing party takes place at the fenced-in residence of some ageless Malibu film folk and famed party-givers (including Arthwright) who have been living for decades as vampires of pleasure. Their particular pleasure is to extend their snouts like a mosquito's feeding tube and suck out just enough flesh to leave a victim emaciated but still alive. Some of the party guests are themselves in advanced decay but still actively autoerotic. The story's ghastliest effects focus on the wetbones, or victims now a skinless rubble of fresh bones—bones sometimes strapped together with thongs to make wet furniture.... The queasies'll getcha if you don't watch out!
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-929480-63-5
Page Count: 271
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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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