Those who enjoy detailed historical study may find this fascinating.
A historical novel following feudal lord Arima, several of his samurai guardsmen and their lady friends, through a single eventful day in August 1646.
Hideo is a samurai of distinguished ancestry and an undercover Christian, since Christianity was outlawed by Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu a generation before. Hideo's best friend Kobiyashi is a humble and traditional youth, wholly devoted to Arima and to the art and science of the samurai sword. As grandson of a farmer-turned-soldier, Kobiyashi is fortunate to be included in Arima's noble guard and is duly grateful. Shinbei, a fellow samurai and friend to the young men, is also of humble birth, only one generation removed from the plow. He is an excellent calligrapher, and has become the official scribe for Arima, privy to the lord's conniving with a Dutch sea captain to overthrow the shogun. The lord has declared a three-day holiday, putting on a glorious festival to demonstrate his ingenuity, wealth and power. Emissaries of the shogun are in attendance, along with Arima's daughter, his samurai, craftsmen, geishas, vendors, noble and common folk of the fiefdom. Upon this stage–with the heat, the disguises, intrusions of spies and assassins–secrets and conspiracies multiply and divide. Add to these complications a profusion of Japanese words in the text and digressions about types of swords and daggers, and you have what can be laborious and tedious reading. There are many characters here, along with living and dead and relatives, and their names are sometimes written surname first, in the Japanese fashion, and sometimes the other way around. Glossaries of names and Japanese words are appended in the back of the book, but having constantly to refer to them is distracting. The pace of the novel picks up toward the middle, but it is slow at first and the characterization, in general, is perfunctory. Characters and plot seem to be means instead of ends in themselves, and will disappoint those expecting a lively tale of romance and adventure.
Those who enjoy detailed historical study may find this fascinating.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5563-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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