The author of The Horses of the Night (1993), among seven others, continues his rise with a modern vampire romance that harks back to the metaphysical poets' device not only of trading eyes but bodies as well. Cadnum's story at first seems simplistic, satirical, and thoroughly unserious. But midway the prose jells to a philosophical lyricism rarely found in this genre. San Francisco lawyer Richard Stirling, who's sure his cool, infertile wife Connie plays around, has himself taken a lover, the blind classical pianist Rebecca Pennant. When Rebecca is murdered in her bathroom and her house burned down, Connie's all sympathy. Then, to Richard's surprise, a strange mirror is delivered to his door: an antique with white wood frame and a carved unicorn. When Richard nicks his finger on the back edge of the mirror, it won't stop bleeding, even when treated by the family physician, Dr. Opal. Later, quite faint, Richard falls through a restaurant's glass door—and wakes up nine months later buried and in a sealed coffin, an exquisitely rendered Poe- esque turn. Once he claws his way from the grave and staggers to Dr. Opal's house, the surprised doctor rids his amazing patient of embalming fluid and replaces it with blood. Soon enough, Richard finds he must have human blood and sets about bloodsucking. His real mission: to find and destroy Rebecca's murderer. Eventually, he digs Rebecca up and feeds her his own blood, restoring her corpse to life, after which the love story takes over: The two hide in a stolen yacht at sea (wonderful storms) and in a redwood forest, feeding on deer (Rebecca detests murder, though hunger for human blood overcomes her). When the lovers are burned to bone, the story lifts heavenward into their post-life together: ``People are all that holds the sky in place . . . This is what the stars can never equal, this glittering minutia, the subtle accidents of lives.'' Chopin's Fantasie-impromptu for vampires.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-7867-0239-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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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