A family-tragedy tale that makes some familiar pleas for understanding before wheezing to the finish line.
One man’s near-fatal shooting unlocks his family’s secrets about faith, finances and sexuality.
Alumit’s second novel (Letters to Montgomery Clift, not reviewed) is inspired by the 1999 shootings at a Los Angeles Jewish school, during which a Filipino-American postal worker was killed. In this story’s version of events, mailman Jory Lalaban survives, and while confined to his hospital bed, he contemplates the life that was nearly cut short—a childhood in an orphanage where he was raised by Jesuits; his shotgun marriage to a wealthy girl, Belen; his love of transcendentalism and conversion to a moon-worshipping faith; and the death of his son Jun. Meanwhile, his immediate family has its own concerns. Belen, who works as a nurse, grows panicky about the ever-escalating hospital bill, and fears that Jory’s shooting is proof of her mother’s curse on her for becoming pregnant. Emerson, their eldest son, is a shy and neurotic gay man, and he anxiously strives to work up the nerve to speak publicly about his father while reaching out for the comfort of his estranged boyfriend, Michael, a flight attendant from Taiwan. In general, the focus here alternates from Jory to Belen to Emerson, a structure that lets the reader engage with each character’s idiosyncrasies; Belen, for instance, believes she has a direct line to the Virgin Mary, while Emerson is comforted by cell-phone calls from his deceased brother. But though Alumit is skilled when it comes to characterization—the tension between Emerson and Michael is nicely rendered—the novel is so stuffed with good intentions that it becomes tedious. Alumit makes an honorable plea for the reader to understand Filipino culture, Jory’s faith, Emerson’s homosexuality and the way a child’s death rends a family, but by the closing chapters, the narrative is firmly locked into tearjerker mode—its spiritual elements, initially intriguing, ultimately feel like bits of greeting-card sentimentality.
A family-tragedy tale that makes some familiar pleas for understanding before wheezing to the finish line.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7867-1629-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
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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