An eccentric first novel by poet Cooley explores the sometimes creepy, sometimes entrancing link between identical twins. Having just given birth to a stillborn daughter, Alice, a 29-year-old artist, begins reconsidering her own troubled history, urged on in this pursuit when her twin Madeline calls to implore Alice to join her in Sarasota. Alice and her husband Owen agree that a summer away from their home in Atlanta would provide a healthful respite; little do they know that it will also provide Madeline with the foothold she’s been seeking to claim Alice for herself once again. When the two are reunited, the present narrative is overtaken by memories of the past: their great-grandmother Agatha, a twin herself, raises their mother Lily after a car accident has killed her parents. Under Agatha’s tutelage, Lily, a budding ballerina with sights on the New Orleans Ballet, becomes immersed in the world of Judy Garland; Agatha and Lily share facts of the singer’s tragic life as others would a love bond. When Lily becomes pregnant, she hopes that “Agatha’s trick”—drinking vinegar and then vomiting—will leave her trim enough to keep on dancing—but her twin daughters are born despite the abuse. Moreover, Agatha abandons Lily for good. Raising Alice and Madeline in a cheap highway motel where she works as a maid, Lily slips into a deranged behavior typical of the traditions of their small family. She teaches her daughters “Agatha’s trick,” tutors them in the life of Judy Garland, takes them on midnight drives around her old haunts, then deserts them before their 18th birthday. Later, when Alice and Madeline meet in Sarasota, it’s obvious to Alice that her sister’s mental condition has deteriorated even further than their mother’s did: she dresses in costumes and wants to go play in an imaginary Emerald City. A quirky and appealing novel as Cooley builds a riveting story around the sometimes dangerous bonds of family.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-039251-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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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