Joss begins her psychological vivisection where other suspense novelists leave off. The results are extraordinary.
A calamitous accident is followed by an even more unsettling event in this sixth helping of psychological suspense from Joss (Half Broken Things, 2005, etc.).
Minutes after discovering that her husband, a Wiltshire anesthesiologist, is cheating on her, the nameless narrator, professing that the end of her marriage really doesn’t matter, inadvertently runs over a bicyclist and kills her. Leaving her victim, retired teacher Ruth Mitchell, in the road and driving off is cruel enough to her but even crueler to Ruth’s husband Arthur. Disconnected and disoriented, Arthur begins writing letters to his dead wife at the suggestion of a friend, and the correspondence takes on a disturbing life of its own when he begins to seek some sign of her everywhere, including in their house and garden, and in The Cold and the Beauty and the Dark, the unfinished novel she’d been writing. As Ruth’s novel-within-a-novel unfolds, the story of Evelyn Ashworth’s betrayal first by her husband and then by his uncle between 1932 and 1956, it gradually becomes clear both that her characters are more solid and substantial, albeit less nuanced, than Joss’s own, and that the two sets of characters have some definite connection. Arthur, withdrawing from the well-intentioned neighbors determined to comfort him over his most violent objections, searches more and more urgently for that connection. Meantime, Ruth’s accidental killer, drawn by motives deeper and more obscure than mere remorse, takes to watching Arthur’s house and insinuating herself into it, taking the place of the woman whose life she ended. Joss’s exploration of her loners’ doomed attempts to reach outside themselves will remind readers of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, but her pathology is even more elliptical.
Joss begins her psychological vivisection where other suspense novelists leave off. The results are extraordinary.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-385-34118-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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