Occasionally funny and touching but, overall, a disappointment.
A glum tale of love lost and then haphazardly regained in middle age.
Lee is happy enough with her lot in life as the proud wife of a small-town history professor, mother of three grown children, contentedly rooted in the house she was raised in. But with the small-press publication of her memoir about traveling with her extraordinary grandmother, Lee begins to fret over the past, especially that London summer she met Simon and experienced first love—maybe, she realizes unsettlingly all these years later, her only true love. This is a sticky situation for a happily married woman, but how happy is she really? Lee begins to consider her safe choices: staying put in Maine, marrying stolid Ben very shortly after her parents’ accidental death, becoming the ever-helpful cheerleader to her husband’s never-finished study of a dull Maine lumberjack, and of course suppressing the reckless passion she felt for Simon. Much of the story travels back to Lee and Simon’s meeting, their parting and pledging of eternal love, and the one-night stand they had in their 30s, when Lee and Ben spent an academic summer abroad in London. To the novel’s detriment, Lee’s tale makes a pale footnote to her memories of Grandmother Marguerite, a memorable beauty and a real grande dame, bejeweled, adulterous, and spoiled, feasting on the banquet of life. Part of Lee’s problem, we quickly see, is that she feels small under Marguerite’s consuming shadow, but that insight doesn’t help the plot much. Now 50 and increasingly obsessed with Simon, Lee manages a trip to England to see whether the real man can live up to the exalted memory. And if he does, then what? The talented Medwed, author of two endearingly witty previous novels (Host Family, 2000, etc.), has lost her timing this go-round, with a sad heaviness and some not particularly funny jokes replacing her former comic charm.
Occasionally funny and touching but, overall, a disappointment.Pub Date: June 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-53079-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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