An experimental work that relentlessly tests states of reality versus fantasy.
A second self-assured sexual coming-of-age tale by the young Sicilian author of 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed (2004).
The opening of this hallucinatory novel in episodes describes a buzzing bee entangled in the hair of the first-person narrator, as if trying to impart to her some kind of message she can’t understand. This scene establishes the story’s impressionist, somewhat arbitrary feel. The narrator is scarcely 19, and already fairly well known as an author in Rome, where she lives with her lover, Thomas, for whom she has left her boyfriend Claudio back home in Catania, Sicily. Thomas brings out her maternal side, and she begins to feel terrible homesickness for her mother and Catania. Childhood memories of growing up there with her mother, father and extended family compound the growing insecurity the narrator feels in her relationship with Thomas. She expresses the need to return to her “roots,” yet recognizes that this is not possible. She often addresses her mother as “You,” a kind of guardian: “You watch and protect it as I have not asked you to, as I do not expect you to.” After a traumatic miscarriage, she begins to question Thomas’s fidelity, and drives a wedge between them by cross-examining him with obsessive jealousy. Voices whisper to her—her mother’s voice, as well as strange women who goad her to write and to spy on Thomas. Her mother used to warn her about dragonflies, which, she said, were actually women who visit at night and cast spells, and in her increasingly delusional state, the narrator imagines these so-called night-women are pursuing her. In the end, the story is saved from descending into a confusing disjointedness by the narrator’s youthful, candid voice.
An experimental work that relentlessly tests states of reality versus fantasy.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8021-7022-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
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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