Despite his sanctimonious protestations, Curtis hasn’t learned his lesson, and future fracases, necessitating future books,...
Another episode in the soap opera otherwise known as the life of Reverend Curtis Black.
Chicago mega-church pastor and celebrity author Reverend Black has another self-engineered debacle on his hands. Although in the last installment he and wife Charlotte had cheated on each other, Curtis is unable to forgive her. Charlotte, who has atoned in myriad ways, including transforming her resentment of Curtis’ love child Curtina into profound motherly love, goes into a tailspin when Curtis moves into a guest bedroom and coldly informs her that he will file for divorce the minute their son Matthew has graduated from high school and is safely Harvard-bound. At her favorite suburban sports bar, she has a few too many and returns home schnockered. She pours out her frustrations to Curtis, who only grows more indifferent the more she drinks. Increasingly, he’s been finding solace in daily telephone conversations with Sharon, a new church member who moved (she says) to Chicago to be near him and offers him (he thinks) platonic friendship. When Charlotte’s behavior grows more erratic (she embarrasses the straight-laced Matthew by impugning his girlfriend’s virtue as the youngsters are posing for prom photos, and then stays out late at the sports bar where she’s seen chatting up another man), Curtis visits Sharon and almost sleeps with her before his religious scruples kick in. Charlotte confronts Curtis with cell phone evidence of his flirtation, and the tide turns. Curtis actually warms to her, and reconciliation is in the air. He’s happy Charlotte decided to surprise him at an event he’s keynoting in Detroit, but when the couple discovers Sharon, scantily clad and lolling on Curtis’ hotel bed, it's back to square one. As a pastor, Curtis is a woeful role model—he behaves ethically only when it suits him and is quicker to blame others than to accept the consequences of his own misdeeds.
Despite his sanctimonious protestations, Curtis hasn’t learned his lesson, and future fracases, necessitating future books, are inevitable.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-57247-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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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