Loses its way after a promisingly edgy start.
Has the god Krishna returned? Only in the fantasies of a troubled Indian-American kid, explored at length in this tragicomedy of alienation by debut novelist Satyal.
First the lipstick, then the eyeliner: Kiran is raiding his mother’s cosmetics again. The 12-year-old only child finds his life divided between his almost all-white school in a Cincinnati suburb and his parents’ all-Indian world of Sunday school after Hindu temple and potluck parties every Saturday night at a rotating series of houses owned by affluent immigrants just like them. Afflicted with severe migraines and blackouts, Kiran finds solace in makeup sessions, ballet classes and playing with dolls. For his school’s upcoming talent show, he decides to devise a ballet based on Krishna, whose icon rests by his mother’s bed. Then an idea takes hold: Might he be the tenth, hitherto withheld incarnation of the god? Blue-skinned Krishna played the flute, gorged on butter and was a famous lover; Kiran buys a recorder, increases his butter consumption and notices blue tints to his skin. Being a lover is the hard part, for our hero doesn’t yet understand sex, though his eventual orientation is clear. Kiran studies Penthouse and Playboy. He happens on some teens having wild group sex in the park. He spies on a boy and girl making out at a house party. This spectacle gives rise to a most un-Krishna-like jealousy, and he tells on them. A snitch, a crybaby and at one point an arsonist, Kiran is not easy to love, and his voice veers erratically between that of a child and an adult. The author never manages to come up with much of a plot or develop credible supporting characters, leaving readers stuck inside Kiran’s head as his illusions become ever more grandiose, until he finally declares himself “just as great, just as godly, just as genius as Krishna.” The climactic talent show fails to provide resolution.
Loses its way after a promisingly edgy start.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3136-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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