A profound analysis of complicated family dynamics that should appeal to caregivers seeking inspiration and solace in their...
A debut novel depicts the plights of four troubled siblings brought together by the tragic onset of their mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.
Elizabeth Miller is the youngest of her siblings, a child of divorce, and the apple of her mother’s eye. At the age of 34, she begins to notice an unusual change in her mother’s behavior and personality. While not especially close to either of her two sisters, Teri and Jessica, or her brother, Tom, she brings her siblings together to discuss her concerns. They agree that their mother, Janice, is clearly becoming more forgetful, repetitive, and hostile but hesitate to jump to any conclusions, blaming it on the natural aging process. But as Janice’s condition steadily worsens over the next few years, and as her children slowly begin to accept the terrifying problem at hand, their cooperation becomes crucial. Compelled to work in their mother’s best interest under extreme stress, the siblings see the ugliness of internalized family drama and long suppressed emotions surface. As Janice slips away into a vegetative state, Elizabeth learns a family secret that forces her to re-evaluate her mother’s character, shaking her to the core. Wheeler’s gripping novel is ambitious in the way it tackles the heavy subject matter of losing a parent to Alzheimer’s disease. At the center of the narrative is the obvious tragedy: the slow, merciless death of Janice and the horror her children endure as they watch their mother’s mind deteriorate. But another layer of complexity is added to the saga through the family’s back story, giving the reader insight into why Elizabeth, Teri, Jessica, Tom, and Janice act the way they do. The author details Janice’s difficult upbringing during the Great Depression in Nebraska, giving depth to the quality of her perseverance and will to survive. Wheeler also addresses the damaging effects of divorce on young children and proposes that no family is broken up into black-and-white “good” and “bad” members, a fact that Elizabeth finds particularly difficult to accept when she learns her mother’s long-kept secret.
A profound analysis of complicated family dynamics that should appeal to caregivers seeking inspiration and solace in their own lives.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965555-3-1
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Attunement Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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