Relentlessly sadistic. Among the vampires of his earlier work (Shadows, 1997, etc.), Nasaw's done better.
An unsavory thriller about a man with multiple personalities, most of them unpleasant.
When he was a little boy, Ulysses Christopher Maxwell Jr. had abusive parents. They did awful things to him, as a result of which he became a sociopath. Not just an ordinary sociopath, mind you, but the DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) kind. Among the Maxwell multiples are: manipulative Max, the host or boss alter; Mose, Alicia, Christopher, Lyssy, and Kinch. Watch out for Kinch. He’s the alter who does the knife work. He’s also the one responsible for the all the raping, as well as sundry other, graphically described, sexual atrocities. Strawberry blonds, all over the country, have been encountering Kinch at play, but at last FBI agent E.L. Pender has picked up a strong scent. For over ten years, he’s been following the gruesome trail, getting close every so often, then faked out. “The system”—Max, Kinch, et al.—is as elusive as it is murderous. But now there’s been a break in the case. A perp, caught bloody-handed, virtually in the act of disemboweling still another unfortunate strawberry blond, languishes in a Montgomery County (Calif.) jail. He won’t give his name, but there he is being interviewed by Dr. Irene Cogan, psychiatrist, when Pender, having recognized his m.o., catches up with him. Not for long, however. Overpowering Pender and subsequently kidnapping Dr. Irene, the system bundles her off to Miss Miller’s weird little house in the hills. Horribly scarred, innately evil, a figure out of nightmares, and as nutty as they come, Miss Miller also once had strawberry blond hair. Ah-ha! Could it be she, then, who sparks the system?
Relentlessly sadistic. Among the vampires of his earlier work (Shadows, 1997, etc.), Nasaw's done better.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-671-78726-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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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