From deep inside the man’s head there’s no denying the completeness of his transformation, but even so the brutality of the...
Taking a thread from his last novel, The Cosmology of Bing (2001), for his fifth, Cullin uses a true story and his true gift for grit to record the unraveling of a high-school English teacher as he moves a bit too inexorably from heterosexual family life to a gay nightlife, and ultimately to murder.
In a beginning reminiscent of a Terry Gilliam movie, the reader stands on the edge of a world of subterraneans: furtive characters emerging from their sewer- and drain-pipes only long enough to find food and firewood. But the futuristic feel quickly falls away, revealing the city of Phoenix just over the saguaro-studded hill, and one man comes to the fore. Nameless, befriended by a kindly crazy with an idea about zippered cattle as a perfect food source, “the man” sleeps badly and remembers too well. First, he reveals his former middle-class life: nice wife, two great kids, a job he loves. But his wife’s not interested in sex anymore, so night after night, the family asleep, he prowls—first just driving, then visiting the backrooms of an adult bookstore, where he discovers the delights of the “glory holes,” and finally to the dimly lit public toilet in a Phoenix park where the real action is. But an undercover cop is murdered there while the man is busy in a stall, and his double life is undone. Feeling guilty about having bolted the scene (and perhaps about his other secrets as well), he agonizes over what to do, and decides to tell his name and story to the police—an act that instantly makes John Connor a prime suspect. He hides among the homeless, hoping to find his partner from the night of the murder, who can vouch for him. By luck he does, but instead of redemption Connor winds up with another murder on his hands.
From deep inside the man’s head there’s no denying the completeness of his transformation, but even so the brutality of the endgame here seems to go a step too far.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-57962-077-9
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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