soap opera—like tale is repetitive and the answers to those secrets are hardly surprising. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Morris (Oprah-anointed Songs in Ordinary Time, 1995, etc.) weaves the tale of a troubled 30-year-old woman searching
desperately for love, acceptance, and ultimately her own identity. Fiona Range has a unique talent for getting into trouble. Hotheaded and hot-blooded, she lives life on the edge. As the story opens, a seriously hung-over Fiona finds herself in bed one morning with a man she has no memory of taking home. What's worse, he's married and his wife is in the hospital, having just given birth. Yet this would surprise no one in the staid New England town of Dearborn, because Fiona, who spends her days waitressing at the local diner, has a reputation, and it isn't a good one. Her mother abandoned her soon after she was born, and her father is reputed to be the unstable, reclusive, violence- prone Patrick Grady, who returned from Vietnam decorated with a medal and scars, both physical and emotional. Reared by her aunt (her mother's sister) and uncle, a prominent judge, Fiona is beautiful, dark, and tempestuous, an outcast floating unfocused through life. Elizabeth, the cousin beside whom she was raised, is beautiful, blond, even-tempered, and sweet, a do-gooder who has just returned from New York, where she worked as a teacher, followed closely by Rudy, a doctor who wants to marry her. As the family prepares for Elizabeth's impending wedding, Fiona is involved in a series of liaisons with inappropriate men, including her cousin's former boyfriend. At the same time, against the pleas of all around her, she is drawn dangerously to Grady, leading to a climax in which long buried secrets are finally unearthed. Morris has a wonderful ear for dialogue and, here, presents us with a complex, compelling character. But, ultimately, this
soap opera—like tale is repetitive and the answers to those secrets are hardly surprising. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89156-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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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