A fast-paced tale with creepy and slightly sleazy elements.
A novella about a lustful, wayward young man who finds a cursed rabbit’s foot.
Aeron McCloud is a charismatic orphan who’s looking forward to his upcoming 17th birthday party. His girlfriend, Jade, is the new girl at school who draws the attention of every man she passes. Bucky, Aeron’s best friend, is a nerdy, levelheaded boy who balances out Aeron’s brash machismo. One day, while preparing to go hunting with Bucky, Aeron finds a dirty, old rabbit’s foot that belonged to his grandfather. The foot proves to be a peculiar version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ring of power; Aeron obsessively carries it with him, and everyone who sees it is drawn to it. He soon realizes that the foot grants his wishes, brings him good luck, and gives him an unrelenting virility. Every woman Aeron encounters is inexorably attracted to the rabbit’s foot that he carries in his pocket, including Jade, who won’t sleep with him, despite his pleas. But as he begins to rely on the foot’s power too heavily, he realizes that it exerts a profound influence over him, and that he may be involved in something more dangerous than he first supposed. The novel gradually evolves into a warning against Aeron’s lecherous impulses. McHargue (Hunt for Red Meat: Love Stories, 2017, etc.) returns with an unusual tale of adolescent hormones run amok. At less than 100 pages, the book moves briskly, packed with plot and limited to a small cast of characters. The author writes from a second-person perspective (“It’s not your fault you were born with good looks on a bad day”)—a bold choice that makes the narrative more engaging, but one that may alienate some readers. Aeron is a supremely unlikable character (by design), and it’s rarely enjoyable to experience the story from his perspective, especially as he spends most of it in a state of arousal, cooking up immature sexual fantasies. Still, readers who enjoy tales that blend the spooky and the scandalous may find something worthwhile in this quick, easy novel.
A fast-paced tale with creepy and slightly sleazy elements.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9969711-7-1
Page Count: 94
Publisher: Alpha Peak LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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