A riveting character study that turns seemingly routine lives into something extraordinary.
In this debut novel, a small group of people in a New England cul-de-sac spend a bleak summer dabbling in deceit, aversion, and sordidness.
Dr. Carla Bishop, a new assistant professor of political science at Yale, moves to Staniford Drive in Dorset, Connecticut. She and her husband, Phil, a lawyer between jobs, are the only blacks in the community. Other cul-de-sac residents include Neil Testa, who has recently lost his father and is essentially a recluse, staying at home either drunk or stoned. Amanda Holbrooke is a homemaker living with her husband, Gavin, a security company owner, and their son, Kyle, who’ll start college in the fall. Seventeen-year-old Ethan Carlisle is infuriated by his new lacrosse position of team manager, which he assumes is due to his last-season flub that cost the team the state championship. Turmoil for everyone slowly creeps in. Phil’s inability to secure employment leads to apparent despondency; Amanda grows weary of Gavin’s incessant financial manipulation; and Ethan frequents Neil’s house to buy whatever booze or drugs the man has. While some community members’ fantasies may spark an extramarital affair, others’ resentments within their households carry over to their neighbors. All of this negativity is bound to explode into hostility—or something violent. Mancuso writes in a straightforward style that meticulously covers the individual narrative perspectives of Carla, Neil, Amanda, and Ethan. The novel offers a tense, anticipatory tale from the beginning, as the very first line specifies that one character is a mere month away from death. From there, the story deftly hints at the seediness bubbling beneath everyone’s lives. For example, Gavin controls Amanda with a biweekly allowance while Carla and Phil endure microaggressions at a neighborhood garden party. But Gavin’s domineering nature seems a precursor to physical abuse, and Amanda believes her husband is racist, even if not overtly. Despite readers’ knowing someone will die and watching certain players, like Neil, spiral downward, both the narrative and the characters are often unpredictable. All of these threads culminate in an uncompromising and unforgettable ending.
A riveting character study that turns seemingly routine lives into something extraordinary.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949116-24-3
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Woodhall Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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