Rings true without being clichéd, a neat trick.
Debut novelist Ehrhorn works impressive CPR on a trope that has been done to death: the Sturm und Drang of surviving high school.
In 1960s-era Chicago, Talbot High School senior Kelly Elliott is living not the dream, but the nightmare. His acne is all but terminal; he has never had a date; he has just wised off to Joe Swedarsky, the class bully—and that’s just the start of his torments. His single mother, left by his feckless father years ago, has a sometime lover who is a cheater and dangerously abusive. His high school teachers are the typical mixed and sometimes-sadistic bag. There are the usual high school embarrassments, as when Kelly lets loose the fart heard ’round the gym right in front of Laura LeDuc, head cheerleader who seems so sweet but—he finally learns—is a player, a manipulator. He does find love, after a fashion, with Linda Martinsen, who is worthy of it. His real connection, however, is with Mary Harker (aka Ginny Dare), a stripper who understands him, anchors him, comforts him. These lessons are painful but necessary. Senior year does come to a merciful end, finding a newly reflective Kelly, a Kelly who has found a real measure of understanding and acceptance of hard truths. Ehrhorn writes well. One finds sentences like, “The series of life’s dominoes were continuing their cascade” to describe Kelly’s hapless, up-and-down life. The chapters are almost self-contained episodes, each contributing to Kelly’s education. An interesting point is that it is the women—Kelly’s mom, Linda Martinsen, and especially Mary Harker—who are his most valuable teachers, while the males—Swedarsky, Kelly’s long-gone father, the abusive Dan Phillips, and others—are the anti role models. The most poignant passages are those between Kelly and Mary Harker. The stripper with a heart of gold is a tired and strained cliché, but Ehrhorn pulls it off beautifully and tenderly. What finally happens to Mary is a godawful kick in the gut but absolutely faithful to the story.
Rings true without being clichéd, a neat trick.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-92846-2
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Madijean Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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
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