Fine for Flyy fans who want to know what happened next, but for the rest, a tell-all with not much to tell.
A lifeless successor to the ebullient, street-smart Flyy Girl (1996) delivers a preachy take on the price of success and life in Hollywood.
Tracy Ellison Grant, the original flyy girl, is still hung up on sex, clothes, and the good life, but now she's a movie star and successful screenwriter. Tracy describes the changes in her life through a narrative that moves back and forth between 1996, when she gave up teaching and headed for Hollywood, and 2000, when she's back in Philadelphia visiting her family and the old neighborhood. The 1996 portions show Tracy, English M.A. in hand, storming Tinseltown, determined to be a writer. She doesn't want to be restricted to black shows, but within weeks a lucky break (the first of many) sets her rapidly advancing up the writing hierarchy on a science-fiction series. Flash forward to 2000: her new success means she can't go shopping without being recognized; some family members are jealous; her neighbor, former crack addict Mercedes, wants Tracy to buy her a house; and her friends are moving on: Raheema, an academic, is a happy wife and mother; Kiwana, a former militant, has married a white man. Tracy also meets up with Victor, the love of her life, and although still attracted to him, she realizes they’re not right together—which means that she's lonely, though rich and famous. Back on the coast she lands a savvy and connected agent, writes and sells a screenplay, and then is asked to play the lead. Other Hollywood blacks are envious, and rumors fly, but Tracy can tough it out, then use it to deliver a sermon on work, money, and race. Even more success looms as Tyree’s single-minded heroine takes on new challenges. If only it weren’t all as stale and clichéd as the poetry Tracy relentlessly inserts throughout her prose narrative.
Fine for Flyy fans who want to know what happened next, but for the rest, a tell-all with not much to tell.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-87291-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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