Finally, in the post-glasnost era, Russian women are taking a stand against the male-dominated literary establishment and publishing their own anthologies—a courageous act that may turn them into heroines, if not great writers. Here, two of the nine stories collected and translated by Soviet-born freelance journalist Gessen stand as literary gems that don't require her clamorous introductions to prop them up within a sociopolitical context. In ``The Day of the Poplar Flakes,'' by Marina Paley (a 1992 Booker Prize nominee), the happiness of a young female intern is shattered on her first day in the intensive care unit when she witnesses a dying patient's deplorable treatment. ``The Clean Zone,'' by Siberian-born Irina Polianskaya, addresses similar issues through a cancer patient's eyes as she waits for surgery in a crowded room and remembers her youth in a prison camp, where her scientist father did atomic research. Tarasova's ``She Who Bears No Ill'' is also an accomplished, if overlong, Kafkaesque tale written in the early 1980s but not published until recently. The story's main character suffers from a disfiguring, degenerative disease and chooses to lock herself in a mental institution rather than live with the disgust of her family and neighbors. The six remaining stories seem like the work of neophytes compared to these. Lengthy and sprawling, they lack both focus and narrative drive. One, the most radical and explosive in the collection, is apparently so shocking by Russian standards that it has never before been published; but Natalia Shluga's 41- page ``Mashka and Asiunia,'' described by Gessen as ``lesbian fiction,'' is so convoluted, unfocused, and obscure that the lesbian angle would be entirely missed if not for Gessen's exuberant and pointed introduction. Of sociological significance, no doubt, for Russophiles and students of Soviet history; but, for most, only thinly rewarding.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-57344-007-8
Page Count: 269
Publisher: Cleis
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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
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
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