A likable bildungsroman that cannily evokes how music transforms teenage identity.
A teenager in 1970s Detroit takes his first steps toward hard-rock rebellion after a soft-rock upbringing.
Zadoorian’s third novel (The Leisure Seeker, 2009, etc.) is narrated by Danny, a white kid in Detroit who’s slowly getting pushed out of his bubble. The 1967 race riots introduced him to racial divides, starting high school makes him absurdly anxious about becoming a drug addict, and a classmate who prankishly played the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” in class reveals the existence of a louder, more profane world. His father’s tastes run to the “beautiful music” of the title (the Carpenters, John Denver, etc.), but after he dies, Danny begins a slow-motion process of acting out, developing an affection for Led Zeppelin and Iggy Pop. That connects him to a fellow record nerd named John, who introduces him to the charms of British rock mags and weed. Increasingly confident thanks to John's friendship and a stint at the school radio station, Danny begins to push back against his grieving mother, who’s been drinking heavily. The novel is notable for being a coming-of-age story without a romantic peg, Danny being too emotionally formless to pursue a relationship. But Zadoorian keeps the tone upbeat in other ways: He’s skilled at capturing the feeling of release that music can provide (“something snaps in your heart and a jolt of pure happiness shoots through you better than all the dope in the world”) as well as the anxiety the novelty of that experience can produce in a sheltered kid. The emphasis on those lighter elements soft-focuses the drama of the final pages, where racial tensions and mom’s drinking come to a head. But that captures Danny’s character too: The real world is encroaching, but he can keep it at arm’s length just a while longer.
A likable bildungsroman that cannily evokes how music transforms teenage identity.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-617-7
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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