An often engaging novel with dramatic plot twists.
A World War II–era family saga filled with secrets, passion and untimely tragedy.
Kelly’s debut novel is set during the five years after the end of WWII. After Caroline Hunt’s husband dies in the war, she moves from a town called Beaufort to her hometown of Salem, Mass., with her two daughters, teenage Dinah and 6-year-old Jemima. Caroline soon reconnects with an old flame, Tom, himself a widower who has a son named Tru. Caroline and Tom’s reunion is peaceful and sweet, and Kelly draws a realistic portrait of a new family awkwardly, but happily, coming together. The Hunt girls, in particular, are relatable and lifelike; Jemima is hilarious, and Dinah is refreshingly kind and self-assured, always looking after her sister and preferring “the company of dead authors” to the companionship of her peers. She settles into high school, but her relationship with her slightly older and more popular stepbrother, Tru, remains stagnant; Tru dotes on Jemima and refers to Caroline as “mom,” but he and Dinah never quite seem to hit it off. Eventually, however, Tru is unable to hide the fact that he’s in love with her. Their relationship is tested by its taboo nature, other suitors, illness and a tragic death. Unfortunately, although both characters are well–thought-out, their passion seems to be based on nothing but mutual physical attraction. There doesn’t seem to be enough substance for their relationship to progress—but it does, despite their parents’ surprisingly weak attempts to stop it. The teens’ relationship may disturb some readers, but Kelly’s story is a revealing peek into family life—including inside jokes, closely guarded secrets and long-standing feuds. There are a few aspects of the novel that fall flat, including a few superfluous characters and a few too many cute winks about the time period (“That Tom Stuart bears an uncanny resemblance to that new Congressman in the eleventh district—what’s his name again…that’s right—Kennedy”). Overall, however, the book is an easy, absorbing read.
An often engaging novel with dramatic plot twists.Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989320009
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Legitur Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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