Given an impressive track record that runs from Facing the Music (1988) to The Rabbit Factor (2003), few will doubt that in...
The inhabitants of a rural Mississippi town circle one another warily, just steps away from open conflict, in Brown’s busy sixth novel, left unfinished when he died in 2004.
Valedictory introductions by the author’s friend Barry Hannah and editor Shannon Ravenel offer pre-emptive strikes against anticipated criticism, but they really aren’t necessary: Even incomplete, the book has much to offer. Its cast of vivid characters features septuagenarian farmer Cortez Sharp, soured by caring for a moribund wife confined to her wheelchair and enslaved by TV, who channels his energies into a pond on his property to be stocked with catfish. We also meet Cortez’s supplier, Tommy Bright, whose fish farm is endangered by his gambling debts; Cortez’s daughter Lucinda, living in Atlanta with boyfriend Albert, who’s afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome and speaks in rhyming obscenities; and Cortez’s tenant Cleve, an African-American ex-convict who undertakes to discourage the soldier who’s courting his daughter. The most substantial subplot focuses on neighboring youngster Jimmy, who becomes Sharp’s unlikely confidant, and Jimmy’s unnamed father, an embittered maintenance man who follows his straying wife’s adulterous example with unforeseen and depressing consequences. Brown digs deep into these weathered souls, repeatedly surprising the reader with quirky, explosive behavior and even contrary moments of grace. He was unexcelled in describing people at work and the whiplash confusion of sudden, violent action. Though the narrative was clearly building toward a complex resolution of its separate elements, the final 60 or so pages—which really ought to have been separated from the main text and presented in an appendix—are only disjointed stabs at a conclusion.
Given an impressive track record that runs from Facing the Music (1988) to The Rabbit Factor (2003), few will doubt that in time, the author would have completed the task and perhaps even crafted a great book.Pub Date: March 20, 2007
ISBN: 1-56512-536-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
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
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