An interesting departure from Kalfus’s Slavic-inflected earlier fiction (including PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies,...
The fallout from 9/11 casts a pall over an already moribund marriage in Kalfus’s second novel (following his terrific The Commissariat of Enlightenment, 2003).
When NYC working mom Joyce Harriman hears the bad news about the World Trade Center, she instantly fantasizes that her husband Marshall (who works there) is among the dead. In fact, he walks out alive, and back into a contentious détente in which the battling spouses coexist angrily in the comfy apartment neither wants to give up, tiptoeing around the needs of their demanding, borderline-“difficult” young children Viola and Victor. Kalfus deftly charts the unraveling pair’s separate experiences of resentment, loneliness, pursuit of replacement love (or at least sex) in assorted wrong places and the gradual adjustment to their irreparable incompatibility. Bravura sequences include Joyce’s rather sad and pathetic seduction of a longtime friend’s unhappy husband, Marshall’s amusingly intricate demolition of his sister-in-law’s wedding and—in an ingeniously contrived scenario that nevertheless doesn’t quite work—Marshall’s failed attempt to dignify his despair and frustration by becoming a suicide bomber. Both the strength and the weakness of this clever novel in fact inhere in the structure of parallels Kalfus draws between the Harrimans’ escalating “war” and the embattled Middle East, beyond the terrorist bombings here at home, through the U.S. invasion of Iraq and into a fantasized alternative future that slyly mocks America’s—and the Harrimans’—naïve idealism. Both Joyce and Marshall are sharply drawn characters, and Kalfus makes us feel their pain even when both are indulging their most infuriating traits (her quick resort to temper tantrums, his tendency to hatch overly elaborate plans that collapse under their own weight).
An interesting departure from Kalfus’s Slavic-inflected earlier fiction (including PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, 1999). Astringent, accomplished black comedy.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-050140-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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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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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