A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.
The panicked, formative years of the AIDS epidemic create the dramatic backdrop for this sentimental yet searingly authentic novel.
Treat’s resonant debut novel is set in 1983 during an era that saw the birth of cellphones and the Internet. Yet it was also a time of mounting distress over a mysterious, contagious, deadly “gay cancer,” especially for gay men like 30-something Jeff, the novel’s protagonist. Having abandoned his life in New York City—where “friends of friends were getting sick, and it felt like the noose was tightening”—he relocated to Seattle to teach history at the University of Washington. Timid and with a past history of excessive drinking, Jeff struggles to make quality interpersonal connections amid awkward trips to the health clinic and episodes involving phone sex, invitation-only warehouse clubs, one-night stands, and bathhouses. However, it is the attention of sexy 20-year-old Henry, “a boy on the cusp of manhood,” that he desires most. Jeff becomes sensitive to Henry’s penchant for unprotected sex and, worse, casual intravenous heroin use. Meanwhile, Nan, a kindhearted divorcée and mother to Henry’s roommate, Mike, has opened the doors to her generous home, the Yellow House, to provide a sober community center and an emotional and physical harbor for gay men in need. The House provides Jeff and Henry with a place to live and attend recovery meetings while also offering some life direction as the pull of abuse proves formidable, particularly for one of them. Treat, a former Yale professor, writes well, and his novel benefits from an easily digestible plot and a smooth sense of pacing. The conclusion may seem overwhelmingly somber to some readers, yet it’s fitting for the troubled era. Treat’s novel is a fine addition to AIDS literature, wonderfully achieving the frantic atmosphere of the mid-1980s, the rainy rawness of the Pacific Northwest, and the sensuality and unique connections within the gay community.
A compassionate, engrossing novel of life in the early plague years, depicted here with authentic detail and a true heart.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965405-7-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Big Table Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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