The premise of Shames’s new Florida crime comedy couldn’t be simpler: a vacationing innocent is mistaken for an up-and-coming mobster. New Jersey furniture mogul Moe Kleinman doesn’t know that the Paradise Motel his new travel agent has booked the winner of his annual sales contest into is actually something of a gay nudist colony. Since Alan Tuschman, the big softie who’s been winning these contests almost every year, is not that kind of a guy, his vacation would look less than ideal even if nothing else went wrong. But plenty of other things do go wrong, starting, even before he’s checked into the Paradise, when a pair of hoods named Chop Parilla and Squid Berman misidentify Tuschman as Big Al Marracotta, the diminutive goodfella who’s not only taken over Nicky Scotto’s New York fish market franchise but fed Nicky some clams that violently disagreed with him. Nicky’s too fair to have the guy whacked, but he’s willing to pay Chop and Squid $30,000 to put him through a week of hell in the most fiendishly inventive ways they can. The only obstacles to Tuschman’s escalating nightmare are his equable attitude toward life’s little mishaps, his budding friendship with Big Al’s girlfriend Katy Sansone, and Squid’s unexpected artistic conscience, which won’t let any of his dirty tricks be cheap or easy. Fans will recognize the character types—the good-natured sucker, the under- average-IQ lowlifes, the moll with the heart of gold—from Shames’s earlier Mafia farces (Virgin Heat, 1997, etc.). What they won’t find here are the curlicues of twist and counterplot that make the tiniest oops resound throughout most of his novels like a belch at a funeral. What you see is what you get, and most readers will know long before hapless Tuschman does exactly what’s coming and when. The results are as tartly amusing as ever, but a lot more predictable—a good introduction for newcomers, but a letdown for fans.
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50252-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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
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
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