A werewolf novel with teeth, from the author of Nightlight and Sleepwalker (both 1990). Never has the transformation of man into wolf been portrayed with such psychospiritual intensity as in the narration of Benjamin Byrd, a meek San Francisco psychologist who describes his evolution into a vibrant force of nature. Byrd, an avid ``collector,'' begins his new life when his car clips the dog of the alluring Johanna Fisher. Grateful for his concern, Johanna introduces Byrd to someone who sells him a bizarre set of fangs set in silver. Under their influence, Byrd nightly begins to changeat first unwittingly, then consciouslyinto a werewolf, ``running in the night.'' So enamored is he of his new freedom, power, and sensations, and of his infatuation with Johannasoon revealed as a fellow werewolf, also transformed by the fangsthat Byrd accepts the accompanying bloodlust, including his killing and eating of two people. However, when his wife leaves him for another man whom he vengefully devours, Byrd tastes remorsewhich, along with police pursuit of the ``Night Beast'' terrorizing the city, forces him and Johanna to flee to the Canadian wilderness. There, in a hard but exhilarating plunge into raw nature, Byrd lopes with wolves, fights a wildcat, and eludes hunters; at the same time, he finds himself growing in compassion for all living things, even for the renegade FBI agent who tracks him down and whom he kills. This compassion compels him to return to S.F. to confess his crimes and to destroy the fangs; but, as Johanna warns, ``Our lives are rich with surprise''including a cathartic bloodbath and a final dash for freedom. Overlong, overcomplicated, and shamelessly melodramatic, with cliffhanging chapters and much emoting; but Cadnum's swollen style and poetic prose well suit his hero's Byronic status, helping to make this the most romantic and thoughtful of werewolf novels.
Pub Date: June 3, 1991
ISBN: 0-88184-728-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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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