A thoughtful but unfortunately overwrought study of romantic perfidy.
Two married couples deal with the destructive effects of infidelity in Clerge’s (End of the World: The Beginning, 2016, etc.) novel.
Chelsea Hall has never quite recovered from her husband Garrett’s past dalliances with other women, and now she’s sure that he’s cheating yet again. He works impossibly long hours, shows no sexual interest in her, and buys her lavish gifts that seem to be the product of a guilty conscience. Her self-esteem is already battered by the fact that she abandoned her career for motherhood, as well as by weight gain from her pregnancy. She finds some support from a therapist who wrote a book on cheating—a New York Times best-seller, in fact—and in the emotionally sensitive fiction of a self-published author, Luke Thompson, who waits tables part time to make up for his lack of commercial success. His own first marriage was destroyed by betrayal—his wife cheated on him, and he subsequently cheated on her in retaliation. Now he’s wed to another woman named Brandi, but he regrets being rushed into the marriage; meanwhile, Brandi’s frustration mounts as he doggedly pursues a financially floundering writing career. Luke’s and Chelsea’s lives collide when she sends him a flattering note online; the two agree to meet and soon begin a torrid affair. Their tender union, however, begets a grim series of catastrophes involving murder, suicide, and imprisonment. Author Clerge intelligently plumbs the corrosive aspects of adultery, as well as the many ways that matrimonial duplicity can haunt a relationship, even after apologies have been grudgingly accepted. However, Garrett and Brandi come off more like monsters than real people, as they’re both infinitely shallow and cruel to their respective partners. Also, the story eventually spirals into soap-operatic melodrama, eschewing narrative nuance on its way to a cinematic, hyperventilating ending. Clerge has a flair for unexpected plot twists and shows skill at depicting complex character entanglements. However, both of these strengths come at the expense of narrative plausibility.
A thoughtful but unfortunately overwrought study of romantic perfidy.Pub Date: April 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9965017-8-1
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Clerge Books
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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