Again Oates penetrates the dead center of consciousness immobilized by magnetically opposed imperatives—need and impotence, the individual and the "flow" of God, love and murder. And assassination is inevitable when we and our enemies (mirror images of one another) "do the things we must do." Andrew Petrie, ex-Senator and a "radical conservative" political philosopher, is in fact murdered; his widow Yvonne is killed (is it real or a dream?—it doesn't matter), her limbs methodically hacked away; and Andrew's brother Hugh lies in living death after a suicide attempt. Andrew's other brother Stephen, an ex-seminarian from whom God had "withdrawn" examines guilt like the others: "The less human you are, gravitating toward God or away. . . the more danger you are to human beings." The countdown away from, and toward, the various assassinations is intoned through three narrators—Hugh, Yvonne and Stephen. Hugh gasps on about his obsessed love/hate for Yvonne and his attempt to "keep Chaos away" with his art. Yvonne, as widow, preserver of her husband's voice through his written words, realizes finally that "we are all the same person, the same words. . . his life did not matter." Stephen stresses the world's essential absurdity. The narratives cover roughly the same time period, touch lightly here and there, but like the marriage of Yvonne and Andrew, never achieve a true union. Everyone says "I'm sorry." "Murders everywhere (await) the kind words and apologies." Oates records each frisson of the tormented consciousness with ruthless exactitude. Reading this is like following the spasmodic jerks of a cardiograph stylus through a long nightwatch, and truth to tell, it's rather a chore. The attention tends to wander—the stasis is too deadening, the range too circumscribed. But then there is the absolute integrity of Oates' bleak vision and an occasional efficient scene of stark horror—the unique powers of this irritating and demanding writer cannot be altogether dismissed.
Pub Date: Oct. 24, 1975
ISBN: 0814907679
Page Count: 584
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
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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