Possibly a roman á clef, but the clef probably fits any number of doors. Entertaining if a little long-winded.
Fresh young associates and cynical old partners do battle with shifty prosecuting attorneys, soulless corporations, treacherous families and each other, in an issue-packed first novel from a young, famously monikered Penn law professor.
Skillfully pitching to the latest generation of young lawyers now facing the shock of the law in practice v. the law in school and wondering whether the career will be worth the huge student loan, Roosevelt sets a brood of Ivy-educated fledglings in a richly feathered nest on K Street. Earnest, sleep-deprived Mark Clayton, equally earnest distance-running Katja Phillips, terminally shallow Ryan Grady and former Supreme clerk Walker Eliot have begun their careers at D.C. power firm Morgan Siler, pulling down six-figure salaries but, with the exception of superstar Walker, nearly collapsing under odious and endless assignments. The firm is girding for battle in the defense of a careless Texas chemical firm against a class action suit featuring a shocking number of dead low-wage workers, and the young associates must learn the ins and outs of the corporate shell game crafted by Morgan Siler to insulate the chemical company from just such pesky problems. Glamour boy Walker, meanwhile, has saddled poor Mark with the pro bono defense of a soon-to-be-executed Virginian whose family seems a little too easily resigned to the man’s fate. Alternating trips to the Texas Chernobyl, where the locals despise the Washingtonians and the only motel is a dump, with drives to Norfolk, where the executioner’s clock is ticking but the hotel is luxe, Mark begins to piece together the alleged murderer’s defense. Meantime, Katja works her way through boxes of documents until she accidentally stumbles on unpleasant truths about the toxic fire, unaware that she is becoming ever dearer to the heart of a clever but lonely and much older litigator. And at the top of the heap, the stuffed-shirt son of the firm’s founder ponders the idea of a trophy wife.
Possibly a roman á clef, but the clef probably fits any number of doors. Entertaining if a little long-winded.Pub Date: June 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-26187-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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