Students of Soviet-era Russian culture will enjoy reading between the lines. Readers who love a good ghost story will enjoy...
An excellent anthology of psych-and-spook mischief from behind the Iron Curtain, where a literature rich in such things held sway during the Soviet era.
If you create a Frankenstein monster—a blend of Marxist idealism and Asian despotism, say—then you are going to have problems. The same is true if you allow generations of inbred mediocrities to occupy your throne. Gathering nine hitherto untranslated tales, Maguire (Russian Literature and Culture/Oxford Univ.) observes that the early practitioners of Soviet gothic, among them Ivan Bunin, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov, “used supernatural imagery and settings to convey the internal decay of imperial Russia and the chaotic Communist society that replaced it.” Their followers—Perov, Chayanov, Peskov, etc.—elaborated on themes such as mortality, the nature of the soul and, creepily but effectively, the pesky habit of mannequins of coming to life and giving people frights: “In spite of the somewhat crude craftsmanship, the mannequin radiated the impression of a portrait drawn from life. It was quite clear that this wax sculpture had had a living original, an astonishing, miraculous original.” The ghostliness of most of the stories isn’t quite up to the standards of an M.R. James—or, for that matter, a Henry James—but the Russians aren’t far behind the Brits on that front, and there are plenty of fine, spooky moments (“I’ve figured it out rationally: if he’s wearing the crown, he’s been killed, and if a dead man comes and speaks to me, I must be mad”). About the only flaw in this brilliant and, within the bounds of the gothic genre, wide-ranging collection is that it simply isn’t big enough.
Students of Soviet-era Russian culture will enjoy reading between the lines. Readers who love a good ghost story will enjoy it, period.Pub Date: April 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0348-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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