A middle-drawer miscellany—eight stories and two novellas- -that spans the 20-year career of British horror-writer Campbell. At his best (as in Midnight Sun, 1991), Campbell writes elegant, soul-sucking horror that rivals the genre's finest—but there's none of his best here. To his credit, Campbell admits as much in his introduction, although he does preen about the most recent entry here—the previously unpublished novella ``Needing Ghosts.'' Before reaching it, the reader encounters, first, one of the author's earliest tales, ``Cat and Mouse,'' a lackluster bit of feline terror that does, however, flow smoothly. Next up is the once privately published ``Medusa,'' a true Campbell oddity since it's a science-fiction novella, an unsettling tale of alien encounter. Campbell says it's his strongest work of sf, since ``here and there imagination surfaces,'' and that's about right. Next come four stories inspired by the ghoulish E.C. comics of the 50's: one deals with zombies, a second with mummies, both obviously; ``A New Life'' is a wrenching take on Frankenstein from the monster's point of view, while ``Run Through'' is the collection's only truly scary tale—an eerie mosaic of flashbacks revealing a man pursued by a monster. Three mid-80's stories follow, two of them climaxing with the sort of predictable twist favored by their original publisher, TZ (Twilight Zone) Publications. And then there's ``Needing Ghosts,'' in which a writer takes a dreamlike odyssey through a threatening town and into the mystery of his own life, and perhaps death. It's Campbell at his most surreal—and most self-indulgent: a lament for the writer's lot that mixes horror and black humor as awkwardly as did his most recent novel, The Count of Eleven (1992)—not a happy augury for future Campbell work. With so much Campbell to read or reread, only die-hard fans will want to bother with these scrappy leavings.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-85514-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
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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