An impressive collection of stories—some 20 years' worth— from the Russian author of the highly acclaimed novel The Time: Night (1992): a virtuoso whose work displays both Chekhovian delicacy and Tolstoyan moral force and resonance. No writer, though, is more relentlessly contemporary. Petrushevskaya's territory is the politically unstable and economically endangered Russian urban milieu of the 1970s and 1980s. Her stories, divided here into ``Histories'' and ``Monologues,'' are uncompromisingly realistic, frequently downbeat, yet always leavened and varied by sardonic humor and the implicit background presence of a buoyant survivor's instinct. Their province is woman's fate (with few exceptions, her male characters are essentially opaque). Vividly rendered protagonists include a reputedly ``perfect'' young woman destined to live a frustratingly unfulfilled life (in ``The Wall''); a watchful girl who learns how to avoid the marital unhappiness that destroys her parents (in ``Father and Mother''); a pregnant young wife who leads a tense ``ambiguous existence'' while dwelling with her insensitive husband's suspicious mother (in ``Nets and Snares''); and the hopeful heroine of ``Immortal Love,'' who learns to her sorrow that elusive bliss may be nothing more than ``the instinct to propagate the species.'' Petrushevskaya composes with equal skill both brief sketches (``Another Land,'' ``Crossing the Field'') and such densely packed longer tales as ``The Lookout Point,'' which surveys the life and loves of a well-meaning but faithless seducer who simply cannot commit himself to any of the women smitten by him, and ``The Little Girl,'' the flinty story of an unhappy wife and mother's relationship with her errant husband and with the apparently friendly prostitute who lives next door. All of the women here, despite the variety of their personalities and circumstances, might well join in the rueful litany of one of the characters: ``the grass keeps growing, and life itself...seems indestructible. Ah, but it is destructible, it is destructible''. The work of a major talent, quite possibly the best Russian writer of her generation.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42257-9
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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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