Fans of the Leelee novels (and of Kissie) will be happy to find their heroine’s life happily resolved, though the occasional...
Patton’s third novel featuring Southern belle Leelee Satterfield (Yankee Doodle Dixie, 2011, etc.) is rich on atmosphere and charm if short on plot.
After her husband, Baker, convinced her to move from ancestral Memphis to Vermont to follow his dream of owning a B&B and then left her for the artificially enhanced owner of a ski resort, Leelee is happily back home in Memphis and on the verge of opening her own restaurant. Chef Peter Owen (who was at her inn in Vermont) is working with Leelee to make the transplanted Peach Blossom Inn the finest French restaurant in Tennessee. They are also working together on a soul-mate kind of romance, although his Yankee directness takes some getting used to, as does Leelee’s Southern politeness (or lying, as Peter would call it). Leelee is finally taking some ownership for her life, which is a big step for someone raised to be a daughter and a wife. Thankfully, she has Kissie for guidance, Leelee’s old nanny who is now looking after her daughters, Sarah and Issie, doling out mammy-style wisdom and sassiness in equal measure. Then Leelee gets a cease and desist letter from a lawyer: the current owner of the Peach Blossom Inn in Vermont (the evil Helga) has copyrighted the name, and Leelee’s restaurant can’t open until everything is sorted out. When ex-husband Baker comes scooting back for reconciliation, Leelee considers it for the sake of the girls, though it drives Peter away. Patton has a large cast of loopy characters, offering all the comedy in the story. If only there were a little bit more story.
Fans of the Leelee novels (and of Kissie) will be happy to find their heroine’s life happily resolved, though the occasional slog through insignificant details may test their patience.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-02065-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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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
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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BOOK REVIEW
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