Land's 16th thriller (The Fires of Midnight, 1995, etc.) is an overdone cop-buddy serial-killer procedural, spiced, however, by romance and convincing below-the-surface probing into contemporary Arab-Israeli issues. Palestinians hurrying through the shabby streets of Jericho name their very own neighborhood serial-killer, Al-Diib, the Wolf. His numerous victims are mutilated so brutally that it's tough for the Palestinian National Police to determine even the sex of the corpses. Meanwhile, West Bankborn and American-raised Police Inspector Bayan ``Ben'' Kamal is burdened by considerable emotional baggage when he agrees to hunt the Wolf. Not only was his entire American family butchered by a serial killer when was a Detroit police detective, but his worldly-wise and weary take on what should be law and order in his lonely homeland makes more enemies for him than friends. Blessed with the requisite investigatory brilliance his job requires, however, Kamal has an almost masochistic capacity for pain: He endures a stoning at an appalling Palestinian refugee camp to win the confidence of a possible witness to a recent killing. Before his wounds heal, he's ordered to share his investigation with the spunky, beautiful, trigger- happy Israeli Shin Bet Agent Danielle Barnea. Barnea's and Kamal's bosses have only one interest in common: catching the Wolf before his killings disrupt the latest round of Arab-Israeli peace talks. Fortunately, Land drags his mutually antagonistic protagonists through a sandtrap of postCold Warstyle plot complications involving conflicting loyalties before having Barnea and Kamal fall passionately into each other's arms. By then the two have run down two Wolves and come up against some crazed Hamas terrorists who've cut a deal with Russian mobsters to move drugs into the new Palestinian state. Gory, formulaic, and a bit silly, but what would have been pointless entertainment is saved by sad, frequently ironic glimpses into the seemingly bottomless morass of Arab-Israeli politics.
Pub Date: April 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86267-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
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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