A surreal and darkly funny set of tales of West Coast strangers.
An experimental debut novel in stories about artists wrestling with addiction and sexual frustration in Los Angeles.
Each of this book’s six chapters is centered on a single character—respectively, “the writer,” Mrs. Randall, Rodney, “the sponsor,” “the sex addict,” and Nelly. While visiting New York City for a reading, the writer gets a drink at a bar, where he discovers that all his fellow patrons can read his mind. In the second chapter, the writer is left behind for a new character, Mrs. Randall, who finds a renewed passion for life when she volunteers at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California, while her soldier husband is deployed abroad. After enduring the loneliness of raising an infant alone and then experiencing a personal tragedy, Mrs. Randall begins to experience states of confusion associated with the onset of dementia; although she “didn’t suffer at the beginning phase of the disease…she was entertained almost all the time,” Disney writes. As readers proceed deeper into Mrs. Randall’s mind, they’ll find nothing that connects her with the writer, and nothing supernatural seems to be afoot. Only the characters’ similar geographical location provides a thin thread of connection; the writer is a recent Angeleno while Mrs. Randall lives in or near Glendale. The next chapter, however, focuses on a man named Rodney, whose father worked at the Alex Theatre; in this way, Disney emphasizes the connection between the characters—and the slightness of it. (Rodney goes on to unexpectedly develop stigmata.) As this collection of vignettes about isolation cycles in the remaining characters, it proves to be light on plot, as a rule. However, it sparkles intermittently with surprising kernels of humor: “It is not in the least bit difficult to hide one’s stigmata on the set of an episodic television show.” The wry observations of each new player manage to cut through their personal misery. As the characters strut and fret their hour on the stage, their stories unfold in a vacuum that each one seems unable to escape.
A surreal and darkly funny set of tales of West Coast strangers.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73335-242-0
Page Count: 249
Publisher: TANDEM Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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