A satisfying and unexpectedly soulful pioneer tale.
Avery (A Curious Host, 2016, etc.) reissues a novella first published more than a decade ago: a story about an intriguing stranger who arrives in a small Midwestern prairie town during the 19th century.
On a hot July evening, a tired Theodore Grant rides his two-mule–driven wagon into the dusty town of Cottonwood. He has traveled from Massachusetts, bringing with him 60 jars. His intent is to pick up a letter that should be waiting for him, drop off his mysterious jars, and then head to Santa Fe. The town, in which “not much ever happened that wasn’t planned,” is aflutter with news of his appearance. But beneath Grant’s well-mannered exterior, he carries a dark secret, and over the next 36 hours, he will experience both hope and despair before discovering his path to redemption. Whether through serendipity or providence, he meets Mrs. Quinn, owner of the general store, which also conveniently serves as the post office. During a late-night conversation, Grant shares with her the emotional and physical baggage that has accompanied him on his long journey from the frigid shores of the Northeast coast. In the process, he not only frees himself, but also provides Mrs. Quinn with a missing piece of her own family history. Avery’s tightly crafted chapters move the storyline quickly, but she lingers in them just long enough to efficiently capture small, ordinary details that vividly set the stage for each scene: “The uneven planks” of the wooden sidewalk “began to make walking difficult, so he stepped off to the adjacent mud baked-street and continued.” Describing a rush of gossipy excitement, she writes: “Questions flew about like sparks in a dry prairie fire.” There is no time for character development, yet with few words Avery successfully communicates the essential qualities of the primary players, from Mrs. Maggie Richmond’s pride in her hotel and the cuisine she serves to Grant’s loneliness. Referring to his two mules, he says simply: “They’re the only family I’ve got.”
A satisfying and unexpectedly soulful pioneer tale.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4392-1584-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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