An impressive denouement to Marx’s unfinished play.
Majkut (Asterion, 2014, etc.) offers a fresh take on the classic revenge tale inspired by the early writing of Karl Marx.
Only partially completed in 1837, Marx’s verse-drama fragment Oulanem: A Tragedy comprises four scenes and seven characters. Majkut’s slow-burning conspiracy adds to that cast, builds on the scenes and imagines their trajectories, relocating the action from Italy to 19th-century Austria following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Nihilistic philosopher Tillo Oulanem (who sees the world as “a detestable, viscous place populated by slugs”) has accepted an invitation to lecture at Innsbruck’s university. His arrival is heralded by Rudolf Pertini, a seemingly docile civil magistrate who offers lodging to Oulanem and his companion. But Pertini’s charitable demeanor belies his true intentions: He’s been waiting for years to exact revenge on Oulanem. By casting others of Innsbruck as pawns in his scheme, Pertini instigates Oulanem’s undoing. “Now, I set the minor characters in motion,” he says, “and, like grindstones in a mill, they will prepare the flour for my feast…I will set the table, prepare the final banquet, and serve only one guest, who will consume himself.” The pawns provide mostly engrossing story arcs of their own. There’s Albirich, a smug Viennese student of high standing who organizes trysts in an abandoned clock shop; Beatrice, a young woman whose menstruations lead to violent mood swings and, consequently, a laudanum addiction; Oulanem’s protégé, Lucindo, orphaned as a boy and determined to uncover his origins while he fights Albirich for Beatrice’s affections; and Benedikt Perto, a well-meaning (if hypocritical) priest and staunch combatant of apothecary methods of healing. These braided storylines produce an image of an insular town consumed by anti-Semitism, infidelity, political tension and superstition. While casual readers may feel bludgeoned by the heaps of Austrian history, most anyone interested in the political and social minutiae of everyday people will find these details enriching. In a novel written so well, and with such restraint, it’s easy not to feel Pertini’s steadily tightening noose until it closes as all is revealed—to great satisfaction—in the final act.
An impressive denouement to Marx’s unfinished play.Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615959931
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Nyx Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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