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THE TALE MAKER

A plot that carries no spare parts and a ``gentle reader'' style of address combine with Dickensian characters to give the feel of a classic to Harris's (Bang the Drum Slowly, 1956, etc.) small tale of a short story writer's struggle with an adversarial critic. Rimrose's career begins in 1963 at the college newspaper in University City where, following in his father's footsteps, he distinguishes himself with feisty reporting and parlous editorials and eventually earns a promotion to editor-in-chief. On discovering in his junior year that he is a short story writer at heart, Rimrose disappoints his practical dad by scrapping his budding journalism career for art. After graduation he marries classmate Lucy, and the two toil as writer and agent/editor, respectively, while hungry children amass as quickly as bills. Rimrose's critical successes—like being heralded by Esquire as a bright new talent and having his old college stories turned into a book—are not matched by financial ones. His fame is monitored and envied by Kakapick, the black-toothed, friendless hallmate of his college years whose confusion between truth and fiction cause him to stalk Lucy and whose quasi-Fascist plan to set standards for American literature is unwittingly facilitated by Rimrose. Kakapick's menace increases as his power does: He becomes chair of the English department at The University and hires Rimrose, who needs the steady salary. A struggle between the two mounts as the critic employs academic mind-police strategies to keep the writer's fame and output under his thumb. The novel abounds in satirical insights into the natures of the creative mind, writing, editing, publishing, and criticism. A wry, self-referential story that exalts the writer, trounces the critic, and avows that both are liars. Sic semper Mark Harris.

Pub Date: June 20, 1994

ISBN: 1-55611-397-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994

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THE ALCHEMIST

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind. 

 The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility. 

 Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

Pub Date: July 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-06-250217-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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