A well-written, endearing book that surprises—even if its happy ending is a little too perfect.
A story about discovering the artist within and being happy—talent or no talent.
Reed’s (Courting Kathleen Hannigan, 2007, etc.) charming new novel stars a neurotic singer with mother issues who has been avoiding auditions and attending frustrating therapy sessions instead. When Cecilia meets a homeless boy on the streets, however, her life takes a risky new direction. By involving herself in his problems, she learns to cope with her own, and she finds fulfillment in helping two troubled teens who must care for a baby while living hand to mouth. The author employs a generic plot that feels very “rags to riches” and makes it her own, using everyday issues—problems with low self-esteem, money, kids—to connect each character to the others. Reed turns ordinary metaphors into apt reflections of the characters’ inner states. Cecilia, for example, who has been stalled in her ambitions, takes up running, which depicts not only how she’s moving toward a better self, but also how she feels about her life despite her progress. To the overly self-critical Cecilia, who’s new to jogging and not especially fast, she’s always being passed, or surpassed, by others. Reed’s portrayal of human psychology is convincing. We can, for example, sense Cecilia’s anger and self-destruction every time she lights a cigarette, particularly since smoking damages her gifted singing voice. Reed sometimes resorts to telling instead of showing (“What she had yet to realize was how much she needed him”), but overall, she gives Cecilia nuanced, flawed dimension. Early on, Cecilia is often judgmental and impersonal, fearing that the boy she’s helping is immoral and even diseased. What Reed does best, though, is bring out similar aspects in all the characters. The therapist, also an aspiring sculptor, finds that like Cecilia, he’s afraid to act and move forward with his life. The homeless boy puts his talents to good use, and each character achieves new meaning in his life—through romance, new responsibilities and opportunities. Those shared traits create sympathetic, memorable characters.
A well-written, endearing book that surprises—even if its happy ending is a little too perfect.Pub Date: April 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938314-0-6
Page Count: 287
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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