Monette's third AIDS-related effort (Borrowed Time, Afterlife): a rather contrived melodrama about two brothers, one living with AIDS and the other being chased by the mob—but, still, Monette has room for his strengths: an exploration of the lessons learned when living with such illness and an appreciation of what matters most. Tom Shaheen once had a career as Miss Jesus, the jazz messiah, and played to good reviews—as well as to county censorship. Now, stricken, he lives in a California beach-house courtesy of Gray, a sort of wealthy angel (``Guilt has gotten more dinners on the table than hunger ever dreams of''). When brother Brian shows up unexpectedly, Tom, the narrator, begins to dredge up his past: paternal abuse and (we find out later) some sexual stuff with Brian. But soon enough the story gets its exposition out of the way and revs up to the plot (not for nothing has Monette written the novelizations of such movies as Predator and Scarface): Brian's Connecticut house gets blown away by the mob, and Brian shows up again, this time with wife Susan—homophobic—and son Daniel. The resulting psychodrama is touching, mostly: Daniel gets to know and love his uncle; Brian and Tom finally become reconciled (even as Brian prepares to enter the witness-protection program); and Gray and Tom fall in love. In the finale, Brian, whom Tom always thought ``couldn't make a wrong move if he tried,'' needs help—the man who set him up has him at gunpoint—and Tom uses his affliction as a weapon, displaying his lesions, then biting the attacker to terrify him before grabbing his son. The ending is a happy one. That is, there's a good deal of sweetness and buoyancy to balance the rhythm of relapse and anxiety. Monette comes full circle—his protagonist not only working through grief but also finding a fuller life for himself and learning to love again.
Pub Date: April 14, 1991
ISBN: 0-517-58329-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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