A horsy soaper.
First-timer Clayton takes a decorous stroll down memory lane.
Young widow Nelly Grace moves with her two sons to Maryland horse country, into an idyllic domain of old money and even older pretensions that the author sets forth, rather naively, as indisputable evidence of impeccable breeding. Here, we are informed, invitations are engraved, wives go by their husbands’ names, and ties are de rigueur at those antediluvian gatherings known as cocktail parties. Since times have changed, occasionally ties are not worn by the younger men (meaning under fifty) if the hostess specifies so on the engraved invitation. The hunt and its attendant festivities are all-important. The reader, whom one assumes has plunked down $25 that—oh, dear—he or she has actually earned, must perforce be allowed a peek into this hermetic world of rich people who “work their lips” before cracking a smile. And so we breathe the fragrance of saddle leather and upscale horse manure and open the barn door to myriad minor mysteries: Why did Nelly’s father, a famous photojournalist, tell her to burn some of his most moving images? Is that old snapshot tucked among them really Emma Crofton, redoubtable matriarch of the horses-and-hounds set, as a young woman? Is it possible that Emma and Daddy—no, of course not. Mother never mentioned it. Nor did Grandmother, during innumerable dinners featuring vegetables in cream sauce and cheese rolls and similar haute WASP cuisine. Perhaps Emma’s son, the dark and dashing Dac, knows more. He’s smitten with Nelly . . . but his Vietnam experiences still shadow his days. Should she believe the rumors of his involvement with Mai, a Vietnamese woman? Did Emma Crofton put a stop to that relationship decades ago, and will she stand in the way of Nelly’s happiness now? But the Big Question for Nelly, who has taken up photography once more, is more profound: Are all her images actually self-portraits, “trying to picture who I was, who I would become?”
A horsy soaper.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31801-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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