novel. All honor to (appropriately enough) Viking for making these treasures available.
What better way to begin a new century than with a generous collection—the first such in English—of some of the greatest
stories ever told. This compendium is a distillation of the Complete Sagas of Icelanders published in five fat volumes in Great Britain in 1997. From that original edition’s 40 sagas and 49 related briefer tales, Thorsson’s edition extracts ten sagas and seven tales. The excellence of the sagas (oral tales that were written down in the 13th and 14th centuries, though having existed much earlier) as literature is attested to in an appreciative Preface by Jane Smiley (whose recent novel, The Greenlanders, is a skillful imitation of this venerable form) and in a long and informative Introduction by scholar Robert Kellogg. But these wise, blunt tales of hardship, conflict, and destiny speak eloquently enough for themselves. The greatest of them all, the brooding, Aeschylean Njal’s Saga is understandably not included. Still, it’s hard to imagine a reader who won’t be hooked by the masterly Egil’s Saga, the tale of a stubborn farmer’s ongoing feud with several generations of Norwegian royalty. The unforgiving Egil, who’s also an accomplished poet and warrior, is the saga’s single most memorable figure—unless that distinction belongs to Gudrun Osvifsdottir, the vengeful hellion of The Saga of the People of Laxardal. Also of highest interest: The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’ s Godi, a taut dramatization of the implacability of fate that recalls Sir Walter Scott's magnificent "The Two Drovers"; Gisli Sursson’s Saga, a compact and thrilling, almost Dostoevskyan revenge tale filled with unforgettable dream imagery; and the "Tale of Thorstein Shiver," a terrific story of the supernatural. Irresistible tales that are, as surely as the masterpieces of Homer and Cervantes, the forerunners of the modern European
novel. All honor to (appropriately enough) Viking for making these treasures available.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-88990-3
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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