“A strange destiny: to always suffer.” This book explores that truism from a singular, compelling perspective.
A persuasive, even gripping study of a spiteful, naïve character, from Cameroonian writer Beti (1932-2001).
Though written in the third person, we spend an uncomfortable length of time listening to the grinding logic of protagonist Banda’s grudges. Banda (no last name) is from the village of Bamila. His father is dead, his mother dying. Banda travels to the nearby city of Tanga to sell a year’s worth of cacao to the Greeks. Set in the 1930s, it appears as if Greeks control the colonial economy. While this may be the case, we see the world from Banda’s perspective and receive Banda’s version of events. Coming from a part of the country that requires he pay a future father-in-law for his daughter, he cannot marry without money, and he cannot bear to disappoint his mother, to fail yet again. When the sale does not go as expected, Banda begins to ruminate, to plot. Banda meets Odilia, a young woman from another part of the country, at a bar. Odilia needs help; her brother Koumé is in serious trouble with the colonials. Whether Banda’s decision to help Odilia and Koumé reflects his better judgment is debatable. The book’s conclusion is unexpected and amounts to a failure of Beti’s—not Banda’s—nerve. The book includes “Romancing Africa,” one of Beti’s many essays, and a useful introduction by translator Higginson; while recognizing the book’s historical importance, he equivocates about its quality.
“A strange destiny: to always suffer.” This book explores that truism from a singular, compelling perspective.Pub Date: March 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-253-00823-7
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
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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