Hollywood satire from British novelist and screenwriter Connolly (Newsdeath, 1978, etc.) that spends almost no time in Tinseltown—and that comes off more like a lumpy treatment for an overwrought TV miniseries than an indictment of the callow pop culture. When Charlie Holyoake stages his arty play about Napoleon and his Polish mistress at a Scottish theatrical festival, the bloated cinematic debacle that Shadows on a Wall will become is years—and $100 million—from Charlie's newly ambitious mind. But once amiable hack producer Harvey Baumberg begins to secure financing from unlikely quarters, it isn't long before Charlie's life goes completely to pot: Ensconced in LA, he receives a harsh intro to the contemporary studio system (money talks; no one reads anything but scripts), schtupps a starlet (wrecking a tender love affair with his girlfriend in London), and goes to war with director Bruno Messenger, a philistine enfant terrible. Matters worsen as the ante is progressively and ridiculously upped, from $5-million to $40- million and beyond, and the massive production organizes its location siege of Poland. The megalomaniacal Messenger effectively routs Charlie from the flick until the studio brings him back as a script doctor; though a wizard with images, Messenger can't do dialogue. Despite Charlie's efforts, the film—while inhaling vast sums of cash from fresh, possibly shady financiers—begins its downward spiral, which concludes (almost) with a quadruple murder. Throughout, Connolly never tires of comparing the location shoot of a movie to a military campaign: Armies of film people collide with armies of extras and blow through money like—well, like Napoleon on his way to Moscow. A raft of secondary characters and mildly piquant sexual intrigues keeps the enormous plot surging toward its feeble, Capraesque finish. The stunning twin revelations here appear to be that movies cost too much and that Hollywood screws the writer. More stalwart than successful. (First printing of 75,000)
Pub Date: July 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11887-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
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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