A terrific book with a believable protagonist who’s given ample room to tell his tale.
A young translator delivers an old man’s last testament, the untold story of a talented Yiddish poet.
A spiritual philosopher, memoirist (Vows, 2005, etc.) and founder of the literary site Killing The Buddha, Manseau has already delved into his own Catholic upbringing. In his debut novel, he reaches across cultures to compose a living, breathing portrait of a bad-tempered but charmingly eloquent poet and the young man chosen to bring his words forward in time. “One cannot write of memory without wanting to explain with every inkstroke all that was once unknown,” says Yiddish poet Itsik Malpesh, who remembers his 90-something years with equal parts impish humor and profound melancholy. Malpesh’s story is interspersed with that of his translator, a religion major who catalogues books for a Jewish cultural organization. A well-timed coincidence brings him to the door of the aged poet as well as Malpesh’s stack of 22 notebooks chronicling his life. “To be the greatest,” Malpesh chuckles, “One needs only to be the last.” The translator’s inexperience puts Malpesh’s cynical voice into perspective, as the young man’s clumsy first experiences with modern-day romance stand in stark, sometimes poignant contrast to Malpesh’s recollections of his long journey. The poet writes of the violent pogrom that marked his birth in Eastern Europe and of the young daughter of local butcher Sasha Bimko who witnesses his arrival and plays a most momentous role in his later life. The emergent poet becomes a revolutionary journalist in Odessa before fleeing to Manhattan, where he becomes entangled with Jewish mobsters and works in the sweat shops of the garment district. It’s only at the end of a long, long life that Malpesh finally arrives at his own version of a promised land.
A terrific book with a believable protagonist who’s given ample room to tell his tale.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3870-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
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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