The high production values of Bantock's latest—with its thick paper, wide margins, and inviting typeface—can't compensate for a weak narrative and often generic-looking illustrations. Bantock mistakes stilted diction for philosophic seriousness in this fable about an artist's discovery of himself. Presented as a journal of an eight-day visit to Spain, the slim story records the trippy musings of Armon Hurt, a New England bookbinder who must settle the estate of his recently deceased grandfather, an artist who retired to his native Ronda after years of exile in Switzerland. Disappointed to discover that his grandfather gave away all his work, Armon focuses on his legacy—a small box with a tiny painting and clues to a ``surrealist game.'' Six questions lead him to various further clues: an 8mm film of his grandparents, some marked passages from Garcia Lorca, bits and scraps of paper from the grandfather's studio. At the same time, Armon begins a drawing of his own, recalling from childhood all his grandfather's prescriptions about art. Bantock re-creates Armon's work-in-progress, from its origin as a realist sketch of an ancient ruin to its final incarnation as a collage triptych. Rather than leave his grandson with mere paintings, Rafael Hurtago (the family's name before Armon's father shortened it on arrival in America) managed to inspire his grandson to create for himself. That's the point of the game—for Armon to express himself, to connect with the ``duende'' (or spirit) of the Andalusian earth. Once Armon abandons his ``tightly held sense of order and composition,'' he discovers his true inheritance, a ``desire to paint.'' He also restores his full family name. Armon's final artwork, meant to justify his long personal journey, is actually less impressive than his first drawing—in keeping with Bantock's also ponderous style with its New Ageish idioms that ultimately recall Chopra more than Lorca. ($115,000 ad/promo; TV satellite tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1997
ISBN: 0-00-225176-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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