A concise and compelling philosophical tale.
Anderson (Plato and Nietzsche, 2017, etc.) recounts a long-distance friendship between two students of Plato in this novel.
The text of this novel is mostly made up of a fictional “lost” novel (also called Thinking Life) by an obscure, early-20th-century Anglo-Italian philosopher and writer named Michael Tommasi. The story within it is narrated by an unnamed philosophy professor who recounts his interactions with another unnamed man—a “philosopher-artist” modeled on Friedrich Nietzsche, according to the fictional “editor” who rediscovered the work. The narrator—later nicknamed “Charmides,” after a figure in one of Plato’s dialogues—first meets the philosopher-artist while on vacation in the Alps: “He nodded politely as he passed, a mischievous gleam in his eye, and he rolled lightly in his stride with a gay sort of musicality.” The two bond over a love of Platonic philosophy, and their meandering conversations have a marked impact on the young narrator’s development. They continue to correspond by mail for many years, although the outbreak of World War I keeps them from seeing each other in person. It’s not until the narrator is a decade into a career in academia that he seeks to see his old friend again. Along the way, he muses on the death of his father, his relationship to alcohol, the changing landscape of academia, and the role of the philosopher (and philosopher-artist) in the world. Anderson’s prose, as filtered through the two fictional academics, Tommasi and “Charmides,” is suitably dense and allusive, although it also features frequent lyrical flourishes. In one memorable passage, for instance, “Charmides” notes that the philosopher-artist “once remarked that he loves mountain valleys with eyes, by which he meant with lakes. The image stays with me as a figure of nature personified, deified, of earth gazing into sky as a god contemplating the contents of its own mind.” As with many philosophical novels, the actual plot is nearly nonexistent. However, unlike many such works, it manages to be a compelling read nonetheless. The passion, doubt, and humility of the narrator make his investigations somehow feel urgent despite the author’s use of a distancing framing device.
A concise and compelling philosophical tale.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9967725-6-3
Page Count: 178
Publisher: S.Ph. Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
