Not stylish, but fast-moving and richly colored.
Deftly time-shuffled debut historical set in 13th-century Spain.
For his own safety, 26-year-old Francisco de Montaldo, who returned from the Crusades mute and seemingly possessed, has been chained in a dungeon at the Cistercian monastery of Santes Creus, where he now wastes away. His fabulously wealthy family boasts great fame and honor in the Church; by their gifts to the spiritual glory of Christ’s kingdom, the Montaldos have bought special privilege in heaven. Francisco has been at Santes Creus for ten years, initially sent there to recover from spells of deep melancholy seemingly prompted by the drowning of his older brother Sergio on a Crusade. Now Brother Lucas strives to exorcise the devil while Francisco piecemeal reveals his trials on the Crusade that has left him rotting mentally. Are Francisco’s crooked smile and his demons connected to his brother’s death, or to the fact that Francisco castrated and killed the abbot of Santes Creus, who had himself raped and caused the death of the servant girl Noelle? Why did Francisco take up the Cross and go on King Jaime’s Crusade against the infidel? A dream of the drowned Sergio pointed his brother toward the Holy City, but was it Satan’s finger? What happened at the great fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, to which the infidels laid siege and which Francisco helped defend with his beloved huge cousin Andres? When Francisco saves Andres’ sister Isabel after she falls through ice and nearly drowns, he finds himself deeply in love with the bright, outspoken 16-year-old. The slaughter of his mates at the battle of Toron wakens Francisco to horror before ungrasped. But the true horror begins at the besieged Krak, where Francisco and Andres are betrayed and given to the Muslims as prisoners at the Citadel in Aleppo.
Not stylish, but fast-moving and richly colored.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-50281-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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