A fine historical novel and a witty, effervescent satire of media saturation.
A comic odyssey through the world of 18th-century London trash journalism.
In Brill’s (Live @ Five, 2013) latest novel, handsome, personable Leeds Merriweather is employed by Charles McNabb, the ferret-faced editor of the London Tattler-Tribune in 1765. Leeds is a patterer, a performer who stands at busy crossroads and dramatizes the top, most lurid stories for passing crowds. “Life is constantly delivering important lessons,” he realizes, some “more painful than others,” though one lesson he refuses to accept is McNabb’s callous pronouncement: “You were made to patter, not to publish. That is your proper lot in life. Accept it.” Ever since he was a boy at Wittyglib Manor, his family’s ancestral home, Leeds has dreamed of writing and publishing his own material, not hawking the headlines of others. He’s still frustrated by his boss’s judgment when he happens to encounter the famous Benjamin Franklin. Leeds notices that he has the kind of face you might engrave on a bank note, then stops himself: “Rubbish, I know. What country would be insane to the point of putting a commoner on its currency?” In the course of their conversation, Leeds conceives his “grand invention”: instead of shouting headlines, he’ll perform a newscast, complete with commercial breaks, every night, for the paying patrons of the Tamed Shrew tavern. The proprietress, a widow named Anastasia Fullbright, eventually warms to the moneymaking prospects of the gimmick; in one of his many clever winks at pop culture, Brill echoes Billy Joel: “It was a pretty good crowd for a Saturday and Mrs. Fullbright gave me a smile. She knew it was me they were coming to see.” Leeds’ plan is complicated not only by his forlorn love for the unattainable Kate Jasper, but also by the rise of rivals to his newscasting act. Brill juggles all these elements with considerable skill, and his Dickensian London is vividly evoked.
A fine historical novel and a witty, effervescent satire of media saturation.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9888643-4-4
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Black Tie Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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