The Lindbergh kidnapping, with its pendant of unsolved mysteries and its merry-go-round of motley extortionists, is tailor-made for hard-boiled historical specialist Nate Heller (True Detective, Neon Mirage), whose hit-or-miss author pulls out all the stops in this lavish fictionalization. Sent east to help Slim Lindbergh after a false alarm in Chicago gives him the reputation of a kidnapping specialist (he really does recover the child, but it isn't Lindbergh's), Nate chases leads too wild for the uniformed boys—one trip to super- psychic Edgar Cayce in Virginia Beach, another to suspect spiritualist Sister Sarah Sivella and her fly-by-night husband Martin Marinelli, all of whose leads lead nowhere—and cultivates his suspicions of the Lindberghs' self-appointed go-between, Professor John F. ``Jafsie'' Condon, of Lindbergh servants Oliver and Elsie Whately and Violet Sharpe, of speak-easy king Mickey Rosner—in fact, of almost everybody involved that he's not actually sleeping with (an unlikely one-nighter with sister Sarah, and a much longer stint with Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, who's willing to pay mobster Gaston Means a hundred grand to recover the baby). Nate's cynicism, of course, is all too justified: neither of the ransom payoffs pays off; a dead baby is identified as the kidnap victim; and Nate retreats to Chicago after Bruno Richard Hauptmann's arrest. And when New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman invites him back four years later to dig up last-minute evidence for Hauptmann's reprieve, Nate quickly uncovers evidence that Hauptmann's been railroaded and that serious mob kingpins (Capone, Nitti) have been in on the case from the beginning—evidence that, like his identification of Lindbergh Junior as living in Michigan, he'll never be able to use in court. Ashes, ashes. Though Nate sometimes writes as if he's been shanghaied by history (``Her smile was a tragic fucking thing''), this is a meaty, satisfying rehash of the crime of the century—required reading for people who still wonder.
Pub Date: May 15, 1991
ISBN: 0-553-07133-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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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