Clumsy and predictable.
Tedious, overwritten account of the rise and inevitable fall of an African-American musician.
Beginning in the mental institution where John “Loverboy” Williams is now being held, the narrative slips back to the beginning, when John and Darin first met. Narrator Darin tells of the pity he felt for mamma’s boy John and how he made it his childhood priority to look out for the awkward, studious kid. The two grow up, Darin becomes a popular athlete and John a gifted musician, and both win scholarships to the same college for their respective talents. Here the story veers into the realm of fairy tale. John makes such a hit at the college’s talent show that he’s invited to play at another college for money. His smooth vocal stylings earn him the moniker “Loverboy,” and with his overnight popularity come throngs of women to validate the name. He decides to drop out of college, and Darin, whose dream of playing for the NFL has been ended by an injury, comes along as his manager. They break into the big time presto bismo: John cuts an album, knocks ’em dead on tour, and becomes a national celebrity. By now, of course, he’s also a compulsive womanizer and a drug addict. Darin tries to restrain John’s masochistic urges, but he too gets hooked on easy money and fame. John’s personal life continues to deteriorate—the relationship with his pious mother becomes strained, and he’s thrown by the discovery of the father he never knew, a married man his mother had an affair with—but his music is more popular than ever. He’s a star! Darin, learning the error of his wicked ways, quits managing, gets married, and goes back to college, but he can’t give up trying to save John from himself.Though full of good intentions and some fresh observations about race, Tyree’s (For the Love of Money, 2000, etc.) monotonously detailed prose limits the appeal of this cautionary tale.
Clumsy and predictable.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-87293-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
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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