A romp through 33 stories of lesbian love but rather circular and expected.
Women in love: the good, the bad, and the still-figuring-it-out.
In her second short story collection and third book, Brazilian writer and translator Borges Polesso explores the depths of amorous relationships between women young and old, married and single, out and closeted, independent and cripplingly co-dependent—but first and foremost, in love. In “Aunties,” a pair of older women, both called “Tia” by the narrator, reveal they’ve been in love for decades and want to marry before they die. A married mother is having an unexpected affair in “Como Te Extraño, Clara” and is suddenly forced to confront her husband about this much-younger woman. In “Catch the Heart Red-Handed,” a young woman has been falling for a friend, and the two finally confront their mutual attraction at a messy college party. Borges Polesso’s characters struggle to move beyond their internalized heteronormativity, such as the soccer player in “Thick Legs” who realizes years later how many of her high school teammates are also lesbian or the woman in “My Cousin’s in Town” who tells her co-workers that her live-in girlfriend is her visiting cousin. Tension results as characters are forced to mask their intentions or to contend with other women who are concealing theirs. Borges Polesso splits the book into two sections: “Big & Juicy,” which includes 22 short stories, and “Short & Tart,” comprising 11 prose poems. After the first few stories the actions and entanglements of Borges Polesso’s characters begin to feel recycled while the poems offer welcome insight into their more abstract thoughts and feelings.
A romp through 33 stories of lesbian love but rather circular and expected.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1977-4
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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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