An appealing couple in a well-intentioned but messy love story.
This debut novel, the first installment of a trilogy, revolves around a woman with a keen intuition, a dark past, and a bright future.
After her husband, Brian, is killed in a car crash, Sophie Winters is a widow at age 25. With no spouse, no parents, and only two friends in the world—Martin and Kathy Bowman—life looks bleak. Enter country music star Jamie England—Sophie feels a strange pull to him at Brian’s funeral (“She could sense his concern...and somehow feeling connected to him took all her pain away”). Later when they cross paths at a club (“Her mind swirled to the past, back to the present, into the future...she knew him. They were a couple in love”). Unfortunately, she has already arranged to move to Amalfi, Italy, her birthplace, hoping to find a new start. On her arrival, she finds the town intoxicating (“Nothing prepared her for its magnificence…her heart swelled in her chest, stirred by the scents of the sea air, bougainvillea, and hibiscus growing below her window”). There, she comes to terms with her family secrets and builds a glamorous life (aided by a hefty inheritance). Then Jamie resurfaces, along with a shady character from her childhood who could threaten everything she’s accomplished. For all its heart, Winkler’s novel suffers some pitfalls. Plot points and character descriptions are often woven into the dialogue, which results in conversations sounding more informative than colloquial, as when Sophie describes her head of security to Kathy: “He’s tall, exudes power, dark brown hair and dark, intense eyes, which always roam on guard.” The narrative gets bogged down in logistical details, with events being relayed several times. The characters depend on recycled traits: Sophie has an endless supply of tears, Kathy addresses her as “sweetie” in most lines, Martin is perpetually “in the doghouse,” and Jamie uses “Dear God” to express nearly every emotion. Despite its challenges, the tale includes elements that should appeal to most readers: steamy scenes for erotica fans, sweet moments for die-hard romantics, and a suspenseful finish for thrill junkies. For those who become attached to Sophie and Jamie, the book is a gold mine after they’re reunited a third of the way through. There’s ample time for ups and downs, the luxuries of being über-wealthy, and general bliss.
An appealing couple in a well-intentioned but messy love story.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5201-6725-1
Page Count: 499
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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