An All About Eve–style cautionary tale for successful women.
Traci Calloway Cole has just published her third novel: Copycat. Isn’t it a coincidence that now she has a copycat of her own?
Lawson (A Sinful Calling, 2016, etc.) adds to her library of novellas documenting the soap-opera lives of the people in the Rev. Curtis Black’s congregation at Deliverance Outreach Church. Fans of the series will certainly rejoice in this latest installment, and its brevity may entice new members into Rev. Black’s fold. This episode focuses on two women writers whose friendship twists into a parasitic relationship. Unfortunately, Lawson wastes little time developing the complex psychology of either woman, favoring instead a quick accretion of troubling incidents. Traci’s admirer, Simone Phillips, currently works as an insurance claims adjuster, although she aspires to fame as a writer of romance novels. Engaged to Chris, a handsome postal worker, she has high hopes for her future, especially now that she’s escaped the clutches of her drug-addicted mother and guilt-tripping grandmother. So it’s a bit like winning the lottery when she meets the famous Traci Calloway Cole at the hair salon. Eager to learn as much as she can from a successful writer, Simone quickly friends Traci through every social media channel. For her part, Traci is eager to have a friend who is also a writer, and she’s happy to use her own good fortune to help Simone; after all, Rev. Black preaches the good word of generosity each Sunday. Utterly oblivious to her own pathology, Simone discovers that she and Traci have similar tastes in everything. Rather quickly, however, similar tastes evolve into copycatting: Simone begins dressing like Traci, tweeting like Traci, talking like Traci, driving the same car as Traci, and even attending the same church, much to Chris’ dismay. Not surprisingly, trouble ensues.
An All About Eve–style cautionary tale for successful women.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-6971-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
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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