Estleman writes about master craftsmen, whatever his theme, either hangmen, automakers, or gunfighters, and then shapes...
Stylist extraordinaire Estleman (The Master Executioner, 2001, etc.) deserves wider regard and a larger audience than he receives. (Hint to publisher: reprint Estleman’s epic Detroit quintet in a single hardbound volume that would demand major reviews.)
Here, a freed slave known as “Honey” (Honore Philippe Toussant L’Overture Boutrille) is so black that his cheekbones glow with a blue flame like blue coal. When a New Orleans whorehouse is closed down and ripped apart, Honey buys the remains for $50 and reopens the House of Rest. Dressed to dapper perfection, he pounds the piano (though he can’t read music and has a tin ear) and carries a Bulldog in his shoulder holster to protect his girls. One night he’s forced to kill a white customer who has severely mauled one of them. That not only puts him on the run but also starts his legend, first as the Blacksnake of New Orleans, then as the legendary gunman the Dark Angel of New Orleans. And he does become a terrific marksman. Meanwhile, in California, laughably inept train-robber Emerson Emerson, known as Twice Emerson, deserts the Union Army at Gettysburg, then gets taken in by a Confederate guerrilla band who mistake him for a Swede from Missouri, and then joins one marauding guerrilla band after another. Later, in Frisco, he kills a Chinese and must go on the run—and eventually he becomes as legendary a gunfighter as Honey. So journalist/failed novelist Ernest Torbert of Jupiter Press in Chicago is sent out to get the story on Honey and winds up helping promoter Casper Box arrange a face-off of the legends and shooting demonstration or contest on stage in Denver, neither criminal being wanted by the law in Colorado.
Estleman writes about master craftsmen, whatever his theme, either hangmen, automakers, or gunfighters, and then shapes sentences like prose poems to the craft at hand, his details sharp as metal shavings, in a voice all his own.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2002
ISBN: 0-765-30189-X
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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
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
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