A refreshingly quirky and sharply written family tale.
In this novel, a young man finds a naked woman on his couch and must confront the possibility that she’s traveled through time.
Angus Wendell is a quietly ordinary man. He has an unspectacular job, lives alone in an apartment on Long Island, and possesses “a face no more arresting than the next one in the throng.” But his routine is thrown into disarray when one day he wakes up and spots a naked woman—a stranger—fast asleep on his couch. When she finally stirs, Sylvia Tipton, as astonished at the circumstances as Angus is, confesses she has no idea how she got there; the last thing she remembers is a terrible fire that consumed her grandfather. And then the shocking incident takes a turn for the weird: Sylvia claims to live in Brooklyn, but when Angus drives her to the address she provides, there’s a McDonald’s there. In addition, she’s never seen a cellphone before—or watched Star Wars—and seems wildly out of touch with the world. Finally, Angus discovers the source of her confusion: She thinks it’s 1943 (it’s actually 2014). But when Angus starts to check her claims, in particular regarding her family and the fire, he discovers they’re true. Even more startling, he inadvertently learns that he and Sylvia have a connection, which causes Angus to believe there’s something suspicious about the nature of his family’s business—the clan owns a museum and deals in antiquities. Marullo (Gludman’s Proof, 2013, etc.) masterfully presents a wildly implausible story in such a way that it seems possible—Sylvia is astonishingly convincing: “The ironclad sincerity through which she narrated events in her life made it feel natural to take everything she said as gospel.” And beneath the fantastical mystery and crime drama is a sensitive examination of Angus’ discontentment with life—he has a degree in art history and wants to pursue a career in that cosmos but is discouraged by his hilariously dysfunctional family. The author has an impressive talent for blending farcical comedy with emotional authenticity.
A refreshingly quirky and sharply written family tale.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-42705-8
Page Count: 341
Publisher: Marullo Publications
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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