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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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