Quiet but earnest tales with emotionally resonant characters.
The stories in this collection revolve around the love that characters crave, lost, or may never savor.
In the titular tale, Leonard Leopold is a successful divorce lawyer. But as his 40th birthday approaches, he looks for a new direction in life, which may entail his obvious attraction to his secretary, Jennifer Hopkins. The L-word drives the stories in this book, and not always the romantic kind. For example, in “Carved Stone,” Jane Simonton has had trouble maintaining relationships since her father abandoned the family. But she ultimately develops a love for Inuit carvings that she gradually collects. The highlighted emotion is even a threat in the indelible, SF-flavored “Love Contraception.” It takes place on the planet Coddle after humanity’s extinction. But humans’ Thoughts have already become separate entities, “infecting” other planets. Love, entangled in those Thoughts, somehow proves dangerous to the cloudlets living on Coddle. Many characters share similarities, especially an appreciation of art, including Syd of “Immobilon” who, like Jane, collects Inuit sculptures. But others are delightfully surprising. In the case of “The Doctor Party,” Mr. Jones and his wife, Helen, throw a party with (mostly) physicians. But while he ogles his therapist, Dr. Kretchmer, Helen seems to have her eyes on someone, too. In the same unpredictable vein, Benjamin, in the final tale, “The Miracle of Estelle,” dreads visiting “annoying,” paralytic Estelle with his wife, Melinda. But he soon sees Estelle in another, brighter light. Piatigorsky’s (The Speed of Dark, 2018, etc.) persistent metaphors are sometimes too on-the-surface, particularly as story titles, like Leonard’s open office door representing his newfound openness. Regardless, the author’s breezy style offers frequent moments of insight: “But she loved that he needed her to be happy, and she saw his incessant self-doubts as endearing qualities.” Prefacing each engrossing tale are debut illustrator Carrillo’s black-and-white sketches, which resemble photographs from an album (complete with corners). A standout is “The Doctor Party”—an imperfectly framed snapshot of people awkwardly huddled with drinks.
Quiet but earnest tales with emotionally resonant characters.Pub Date: March 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-950437-04-7
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Adelaide Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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