Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.
Beard (Dear Zoe, 2005) very faintly echoes Updike at Updike’s weakest in a golf novel about a suburban Pittsburgh lawyer.
Michael, 45, and spunky, beautiful Kelly, 40, who met when she applied to be his secretary, are married and have two lovely daughters. When Michael announces that he wants to train for golf’s senior gold circuit, Kelly agrees to support his ambition if he can score under 70 two times. But then she announces she’s pregnant. Still traumatized by her pregnancy that ended in stillbirth, Michael shows no enthusiasm for having another child, leading Kelly to withdraw from him sexually. Michael’s pharmaceutical stock has taken a sharp turn upward, leading him to believe that he’s about to attain independent wealth. Sexually adrift, he begins frequenting “sexual therapy” center Healing Touch, deluding himself that what he’s offered there does not constitute infidelity. But when he develops a guilty conscience, he tells Kelly all about it, and surprise—she tosses him out. Around the same time, his stock plummets, and to make it all worse, he’s had to move back in with mother and father. He turns to golf, and as he plays under the tutelage of wise and loyal caddy Sal, he reminisces about his romantic and sexual history, trying to figure out where he went wrong and how to get back on track. Now on the golf course, Sal explains to Michael that he has the skill to win but must find the soul to play. As Michael readies for the game of his life, Sal arranges for Michael’s parents and Kelly to make an appearance. With earnest, chapter-introducing quotes from James Taylor, John Steinbeck, et al., the author clearly has sincere pretensions for his characters and story. But his intentions fall flat. There’s no doubt that Kelly is taking Michael back, and that the life he remembers is merely tepid. Time to move on.
Some pretty good golf tips from Sal, but that’s about it to hold your attention.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03759-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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