An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.
With an honest voice and abundant imagination, Rourks’ Southern gothic debut explores human kinship, violence, and isolation in rural Louisiana.
“There really isn’t anything astonishing about the moon trees,” says the narrator of the title story in this mighty debut. “As a matter of fact, some of them are lost. No one bothered to keep track of where they’d been planted, had never even made the plaques.” Much like these trees—their once-valued seeds taken into space to orbit the Earth—the characters in Rourks’ 15 inventive stories have been forgotten by society; on the surface, they’ve been left simply to grow, work, fight the elements, then die along the swamplands of Louisiana. “Everything Shining,” for example, describes the life of a laid-off, injured oil rig laborer. As he struggles to make sense of his new life, he begrudgingly lets his cousin store stolen scrap metal in his backyard, unaware of the disastrous consequences that will follow. In “Ghosts,” a woman fixates on the events leading up to her mother’s suicide as she prepares to meet her wife’s family and to give birth to a child of her own. While in “Pinched Magnolias,” a parish sheriff helps her sister cover up a violent crime, in “El Feo,” an ex-con works to build a new life for his family, even when he suspects he might have been framed for murder. With these stories, Rourks creates literary “plaques” for her characters—carving out space for and drawing attention to their experiences whether they are Pizza Hut employees, lawbreakers, or those too afraid to leave the house. Through her dynamic prose—graceful even as it propels each piece forward—she realizes the humanity of each individual. Themes of poverty, anguish, violence, and family loyalty—for better or worse—tie together these short tales. Still, amid such bleakness, Rourks infuses a sort of magic into each one. These worlds, alive with both the nature of Louisiana and the empathy the author brings to each character, will leave you eager for more.
An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62557-013-0
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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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