Single motherhood is the ostensible subject of Morris's second novel (after Crossroads, 1983; plus several story collections and a duet of travelogues). Here, Morris describes the emotional and physical travails of a young woman named Ivy, who's gotten pregnant by mistake with her photographer lover Matthew—the sort of guy who's always relied on the women in his life to give him haircuts, but does a disappearing act when Ivy informs him that she wants to have the baby. Throughout her pregnancy and first months with sweet, squalling, hungry, constantly diaper-dirtying Bobby, Ivy tries to keep ends together by repairing necklaces and rings for Dinnerstein & Sons, Jewelers (she'll also stay up late doing collage art for herself). But all the while Ivy is haunted by memories of her glamorous, dark-haired mother, Jessica, who abandoned her when she was seven, taking her little sister with her. Ivy fantasizes that she sees them every day—she will spy them across a crowded train station, hear Jessica's voice on the phone—but the call never comes, and Ivy can't fathom how to be a mother herself without knowing her own. Meanwhile, Morris often wanders into Ivy's memories of mad escapes with her mother from the Valley of Fire trailer park near Las Vegas to see the touristic curios of the West—craters, deserts, trinket shops, where Jessica's yearning to be somewhere else hangs like pollution in the hot air. Finally, though, Ivy faces a truth: ``My mother is gone. She left with my sister long ago, and they won't be coming back. I will only know what I can know. That there are people in this world who have cared for me and others who have not.'' A highly crafted, internal book—full of vivid images and touching aperáus—but sometimes one feels the strain of the author here, in the word pictures that seem as painstakingly composed as Ivy's artwork. So, poetry—without much of the messy stuff of life.
Pub Date: April 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42409-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
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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