Despite the bold premise, this gifted writer has, uncharacteristically, settled for less.
Princess Di is alive and well and living incognito in an ordinary American town in this buzzy fourth novel from the British Ali (In the Kitchen, 2009, etc.).
How did she do it? And why? Those are the biggest questions looming over this speculative fiction. Her movement from one life into another was orchestrated by her top aide and only true confidant, Lawrence Standing. He set up a safe house for her in Brazil, where she was spirited after a nocturnal swim from her yacht. Lawrence oversaw her plastic surgery in Rio and the paperwork for her new identity: Lydia Snaresbrook. As for her reasons, she feared “they” wanted her dead; the press was driving her crazy; most of all, her lifestyle was hurting her boys. This portrait of the princess jibes with the common perception. She was a bundle of contradictions: tough yet fragile; naïve yet suspicious; narcissistic yet empathetic. To these Lawrence adds one more—leaving her boys was both selfish and “her greatest act of selflessness.” Certainly she has been racked by guilt and longing for them in the 10 years since she left. For it’s now 2007, and Lydia has found a comfortable niche in neighborly Kensington. She has her own modest home; a congenial job at a canine shelter; a rock-steady boyfriend, Carson; and three super girlfriends. They don’t pry; she has a good cover story. Lydia is a tamer, emasculated version of the tempestuous Di. The novel has an awkward structure, but its real failing is that Ali has not drilled down into Lydia’s essence. Is she capable of commitment? Unanswered question. By chance, or rather contrivance, there’s a newcomer in town, Grabowski, a paparazzo, one of the Brits who chased Diana. Her extraordinary eyes give her away. Instead of a novel of character, we get the cheap thrill of a cat-and-mouse game, as Grabowski senses the scoop of a lifetime.
Despite the bold premise, this gifted writer has, uncharacteristically, settled for less.Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3548-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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