A tedious first novel that might have been a rich short story.
A millennial adrift learns about life while caring for others.
Anyone who has ever worked in the helping professions knows that these jobs can create strange intimacies. This is potentially fruitful territory, but whether or not this novel works depends very much upon how one feels about its protagonist. Ella is almost 30. After dropping out of her graduate program, she started working as a caregiver. This isn’t her chosen vocation; it’s just what she does to pay rent, buy groceries, and pick up vintage tchotchkes at thrift stores. She lives with a woman named Alix who is her sexual and romantic partner, but Ella doesn’t like to think of herself as part of a couple. When a retired carpenter named Bryn hires Ella to care for his mentally impaired wife, Jill, Ella becomes a part-time member of their household. There isn't a lot of dialogue in this novel, nor is there much in the way of action. What there are, mostly, are third-person descriptions of what’s going on inside Ella’s head as she cares for Jill, gets to know Bryn, and watches the pair interact. Ella has a number of revelations about love and life. Mostly, she thinks about herself. This is true of most people, probably, but it doesn’t make for much of a story unless you find Ella as fascinating as her author does. The most interesting aspect of this novel is the weird relationship between the protagonist and the narrator. Consider this passage: “Ella was ashamed of how her own beauty comforted and seduced her; she visited it like a secret lover, she stroked it softly like a young boy watching television, one hand tucked into his pajama bottoms, fondling his small, flaccid treasure.” This very long sentence contains what is surely one of the most awkward similes in contemporary fiction, but it also shows us an author who is maybe a little bit too in love with her heroine, not to mention a bit too in love with her own voice.
A tedious first novel that might have been a rich short story.Pub Date: July 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-65592-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
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