After the grandiose, obsessive longueurs of Ancient Evenings (1983), most readers will find the opening chapter of this new Mailer novel a relief—since it seems to promise the most familiar, controlled sort of fiction. The narrator is Timothy Madden, a 40-ish writer living in Provincetown, Mass., who's been going through hell for the past 24 days, ever since his wife Patty Lareine ran off "with a black stud of her choice." Madden ponders his nicotine addiction, his past amours, Patty Lareine's lurid tendencies, the Provincetown milieu; his musings are "introspective, long-moldering, mournful"—and conventional. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that Mailer is engaged in something of an anything-goes improvisation—as Madden stumbles into a murky grab-bag of black-comedy and sexual/existentialist melodrama, teeming with echoes (send-ups?) of other writers. The prose-style, blending vernacular and limpid poetics, often seems to be a parody of Updike. (It comes as no surprise, about halfway through, that Madden has written an essay on Updike's style: "He has a rare talent. Yet it irks me.") The plot recalls Bellow, Thomas Berger, and many others: Madden gets drunk, meets a flashy couple from California at a bar; he wakes up semi-amnesiac the next morning, with a tattoo; he soon discovers a decapitated woman's head in his marijuana patch (does it belong to Patty Lareine—or the woman from California?); eventually there are corpses everywhere, two severed heads, revelations about rampant adultery and real-estate greed; and all the major figures from Madden's past (his father, his old flame Laurel, Patty Lareine's kinky ex-husband) converge coincidentally. Meanwhile, narrator Madden—part suspect, part sleuth—is haunted, a la John Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts, by the voices of 19th-century whores. But the final chapters return to preoccupations that are pure Mailer: violence and homosexuality as challenges to being a tough guy—with two gay suicides, oral/anal graphics, and Madden's confession to his macho Irish father. ("You think I feel like a man most of the time? I don't.") Throughout, there are chunks of great talent on display—in the sly play of language, in the raunchy humor, in the Provincetown scenery and the sudden flashes of raw, genuine feeling. And this short, lively novel will certainly be read all the way through in a way that Ancient Evenings wasn't. But it's a thin, disappointing potpourri overall—seemingly made up as it goes along, with about equal portions of inspiration and self-indulgence.
Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1984
ISBN: 0375508740
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1984
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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