Don't be fooled by the legal-intrigue title: Most of this overwrought, overextended suspenser takes place miles from the nearest courtroom—or the nearest editorial pencil. But first, Friedman (Inadmissable Evidence, 1992, etc.) gets his day in court when Chinese-American p.r. flack Susan Linwood, sitting on a New York grand jury, hears a fellow juror cast doubt on the case against Martin and Meiling Eng, arrested for heroin trafficking. The case seems ironclad—the cops who broke in on the Engs found half a pound of heroin and a million dollars in cash—but quiet, persistent juror Mrs. Liu insists that 80-ish Martin Eng, a leader in the Chinese community, would never be involved with heroin, and would never have resisted arrest in the way Det. Mike Pullone testified. Susan agrees to raise Mrs. Liu's reservations officially, but although she persuades David Clark, a computer designer between real jobs, of her misgivings, the jury, after interminable argument, still votes an indictment- -whereupon Susan goes to visit the Engs, agrees to travel with David to Hong Kong to alleviate the fears of the Engs's children and make a few incidental inquiries about her own parents' death in a 1976 earthquake. Even as Susan and David are drawing closer to the Engs and gathering evidence of the high-level corruption they suspect was behind the heroin bust, the D.A.'s office is gathering its own evidence that the Engs are involved in something illegal, something that may well be bigger than the original drug charge. So no sooner do Susan and David, who've been panting for each other ever since they flew to Hong Kong, return from their trip than they're subpoenaed as witnesses before another grand jury—if they aren't kidnapped or bullied into silence first. A cluttered, lumbering, unthrilling thriller that begins as an endless update of 12 Angry Men and ends in shrill, outdated Yellow Peril theatrics. (First printing of 150,000; Literary Guild & Doubleday bookclub selections; $175,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-55611-456-7
Page Count: 660
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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