An intimate and resonant take on finding one’s place in the world even while being pulled in opposing directions.
What does it mean to come of age, and how does that change depending on where you live? In his debut novel, Donkor explores the tensions of growing up between two cultures as three young women face the challenges of adolescence in Ghana and among the Ghanaian diaspora in London.
Just after the millennium, 17-year-old Belinda and 11-year-old Mary are live-in maids for a wealthy elderly couple—whom they call Aunty and Uncle—who made their money in the U.K. and retired to their native Ghana. When Ghanaian friends still living in London come to visit, it’s decided that they’ll bring Belinda back with them to London to act as a good influence on their moody, rebellious, and thoroughly Westernized teenage daughter, Amma. (Donkor’s parents are Ghanaian; he was born in London.) Donkor’s deft shifts between spheres and scenes—house parties populated by posh British teens; the rural village where Belinda grew up and where she and her mother are mysteriously ostracized; the opulent home where Belinda and Mary work—are confident and illuminating, revealing the complexity and nuance of modern life, particularly for immigrants. Dialogue, both external and internal, is often a delight—Mary and Belinda’s speech is peppered with pop-culture references and Twi idioms. (There’s a helpful glossary at the beginning of the book, though some phrases go untranslated.) As Belinda teases Mary on the phone, shortly after she arrives in London: “And what do you know of planes? Oh, I forgot, you are in aeroplanes all of the time, isn’t it? Like a smaller Naomi Campbell.” The narrative stays closest to Belinda’s perspective, as it is she who travels from Ghana to England and back again. Throughout the novel, growing up is characterized as a series of losses, as Belinda, Amma, and Mary face death, limited opportunity, and unrequited first love. While the conclusion veers toward didacticism, Belinda learns that there’s power in living through loss, too.
An intimate and resonant take on finding one’s place in the world even while being pulled in opposing directions.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-30517-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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