Although the humor can be forced and crude, Gruenenfelder’s characters are charismatic, entertaining and distinctive.
Gruenenfelder (There’s Cake in My Future, 2010, etc.) brings back wisecracking college friends Nic, Mel and Seema as the three prepare for another wedding and one friend follows her dreams.
Mother-to-be Nic and single teacher Mel are on hand when it’s their friend Seema’s turn to get married, and they’re determined everything will go according to plan. That’s a pretty tall order, especially since Nic’s bridal shower game, the cake pull, resulted in a major mix-up, and she’s planned the same game for Seema’s shower. This time, Nic assures Mel and Seema, the cake’s set up perfectly, and the three friends will pull out the charm that’s meant for each of them. It’s foolproof, at least in theory. Each girl ends up with a different charm, and rather than the passport (signifying travel) she’s been promised, Mel ends up with a money tree (signifying reward). That’s not the only problematic aspect of the wedding week, however. As members of both families flock into town to attend two very different ceremonies—an Indian-style extravaganza involving the groom riding astride a white stallion and a conservative Western-style walk down the aisle—Nic’s jolted with pains, and Seema and Scott find themselves with pre-wedding jitters and facing a possible catastrophe before the nuptials. Mel can handle the snags in her friends’ lives, but she’s not as adept at handling her own problems. She needs to find a new place to live, faces the possibility of losing her job, and is in a relationship drought. One of the problems is solved when Seema’s suave, hunky older brother flies in from France for the wedding, and his visit awakens Mel to other possibilities that take her from the streets of Paris to the canals of Venice and the beaches of Hawaii. Although her journey doesn’t always go smoothly or as planned, the charm proves prophetic as Mel seizes control of her own destiny and finds fulfillment.
Although the humor can be forced and crude, Gruenenfelder’s characters are charismatic, entertaining and distinctive.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-00504-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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