What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.
Whiny sequel to the kvetchy What She Saw . . . (2000).
A decade after her college years, Phoebe Fine is still not happy—the not-so-burning question is, Why not? Raise your hand if you care. Okay, don’t. It’s all the same to Phoebe, who moves back to Whitehead, New Jersey, six miles southeast of Paramus, to be with her parents, for lots of reasons. She hates her job. Her apartment is depressing. Her last relationship tanked. Therapy isn’t helping. Her friends are married. She doesn’t want to succeed at anything. She drinks like a fish. She doesn’t want to live in New York anymore. She has nightmares about giant cockroaches. Her mother, a classical violist, has cancer. Roberta Fine uses the “c-word” to avoid talking about the “d-word,” but it’s clear that the older woman is gravely ill—and that auburn wig with short bangs she has to wear is so awful Phoebe just can’t stand it. She can remember when her mother’s long, hippie-style hair was, like, so embarrassing, and now poor old mom doesn’t have any. How ironic, thinks Phoebe, who is big on solipsistic musing. And her dad is daffier than ever, an occupational hazard of professional oboists, who are said to literally blow their brains out. Being with her parents is driving her crazy. Hanging out downtown with the fabulous, the desperate, and everyone in between isn’t much better, but she does have a slightly higher chance of getting laid. A swain appears: Stinky Mancuso, back from Novel #1, is alive and well and living under a Frenchified name. How uncool. An epiphany of sorts awaits: Phoebe realizes she didn’t move back home to take care of her mother, she moved back home to have her mother take care of her. A non sequitur is tossed in to liven up the dragging plot: Her mother’s cherished viola turns out to be a Guarneri.
What does it all mean? Hard to say. Dull prose and self-absorbed heroine are just plain irritating.Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6185-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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