A novel with the best intentions doesn’t automatically work as fiction.
English journalist Lowe turns a politically correct exploration of slavery on West African cocoa plantations into an excruciatingly shallow relationships saga in New York City.
Journalist and reporter Samantha Blackwood has just come from the Côte d’Ivoire with filmmaker and lover Paul on a mission to expose worker exploitation at cocoa factories. Her task in New York, where she lives and works freelance, is to get the marketing director of a family-owned chocolate company at Rockefeller Center, T&B, to agree to an on-camera interview—although Matt Dyson has no idea that Samantha is working in cahoots with a pesky political action group that’s publicly denouncing T&B’s shameful factory practices. Incredibly, top executive Dyson, a young workaholic with no time for dating, knows nothing of his own company’s doings—exposing some of the story’s faulty interior machinery. Second-novelist Lowe (Tunnel Vision, 2001) seems to care deeply about injustice between rich and poor, strong and weak—as we see in his depiction of Sam’s previous abusive relationship—yet he lacks the adequate stylistic equipment to elevate character above the sketchy level of, say, an article in a women’s magazine. Moreover, the tale is heavily, obviously plotted: Naturally, the antagonistic Sam, the journalist, and smug marketer Matt have to find a rapprochement—which occurs handily when the two are accidentally locked up for the weekend at T&B’s factory in Baltimore. Too good to be true—they fall into vats of chocolate and build a bonfire with the help of purloined cognac supplies. Lowe knows a lot about chocolate, but little about New York City—or Boston or Baltimore, for that matter—as shown through vague and imprecise description. Yet what does emerge is an honest journalist’s intent to expose the despicable practices of American marketing, and on that level Lowe’s effort can be indeed useful.
A novel with the best intentions doesn’t automatically work as fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7434-8209-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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