Abandoning present-day intrigues (MAMista, Spy Sinker, etc.), Deighton journeys back to WW II (SS-GB and XPD)—and a terrific return it is: a rich drama of heroes and villains awaiting German General Erwin Rommel's attack on Cairo—the ``city of gold.'' The plots here are many, but central among them is the attempt by Special Investigation Branch Major Bert Cutler to unmask the spy who's been leaking British secrets to Rommel. The kicker is that Cutler isn't Cutler; he's really Jimmy Ross, a British corporal who was on his way to Cairo to be court-martialed for killing an officer when his escort, Cutler, keeled over from a heart attack. Quick-thinking Ross switched IDs with Cutler and now finds himself in Cairo with an office, full staff, and carte blanche to turn the city upside down in pursuit of the spy—that is, if he doesn't betray himself first to any of the marvelously realized characters who crowd the pages here, from his leathery assistant to a manipulative Jewish nationalist, a White Russian prince, two young and beautiful Englishwomen, an upper-class British deserter turned grand thief, a too-caricatured American reporter (all tough pose and cocky action), and King Farouk himself—fat, decadent, imperious. It's the deserter who—by committing a murder that Ross must investigate—turns out to be Ross's main foil; and it's he who pulls the narrative—the first half of which springs forward mostly on perfectly pitched dialogue—into the desert and shattering action as Rommel attacks an armored caravan carrying Ross and several others, precipitating a crisis that movingly strips these men, good and evil, down to their bare selves. At one point, Ross is likened to Bogart—appropriate in a novel so reminiscent in spirit to Casablanca. And if this is the same old story, a song of love and glory, at least it's told here with consummate skill. Play it again, Len.
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-017937-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
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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