Like most of Bausch's work (Violence, 1992, etc.), his sixth novel—about a family's fate when its Air Force father is imprisoned for two years—has its pleasures, but the material is stretched far too thin, and, though moving at times, the whole thing is far too shapeless. Thomas Boudreaux relates this fictional memoir from the vantage point of his 40s; he lives alone in a beach house in Virginia, runs a used-book store, and tells us his sister is a Mormon. The style is leisurely and elegiac (``I was married, but that has been over for some time now...''), with the bulk of the narrative set in 1967, when Thomas's father—a former POW—is caught stealing an electric typewriter and is dishonorably discharged, then thrown into prison in Wyoming. Wife Connie, North Dakotan by birth, decides against the West and moves with son Thomas and daughter Lisa to Virginia. Aunt Elaine from North Dakota visits, but nothing sways Connie until she decides abruptly to move the family to Wyoming to be near the father. On the train, Connie meets Penny Holt, a lost soul who, much later, arrives without warning in Wyoming. Meanwhile, the father, who was beaten in prison, is released and tries to join the family at the boardinghouse where they live with Penny Holt and a couple of odd ducks. On the day that Robert Kennedy is shot, the father beats up Penny and smacks Thomas, releasing the narrative tension and allowing Thomas to sum up: the family, spent of passion, moves to Minot. Thomas joins the Air Force, goes to Vietnam and returns, to describe his father's grave and his mother's small-town life. The story here, about people victimized by circumstances, is finally more evasive than climactic. Bausch's mÇtier, increasingly, seems to be not the long novel but the short story, where he can shape and prune to incisive effect.
Pub Date: April 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-395-59508-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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