Third in Evans's mega-successful and ditto sentimental saga (The Christmas Box, 1995; The Timepiece, 1996) about the good David and MaryAnne Parkin of Salt Lake. The action starts in 1933, twenty years after the couple's beloved three-year-old daughter, Andrea, died. It seems that the affluent David, in his grief, has grown guarded in his love for MaryAnne, has built ``walls around his heart,'' a failing the reader needs to take pretty much on faith, since David remains insufficiently three-dimensional for much dramatic evidence to emerge. It must be true, though, because MaryAnne has had it up to here: in fact she's about to leave forever, under guise of going to a brother's wedding in England. Once she's gone and he finds her Dear John letter, David—well, he falls very low indeed. Why, though, did his daughter's death hit him so hard? Might it have to do with his own mother's abandonment of him—for showbiz- -when he was only five? And might she, though thought dead, be the same who recently left another letter, this one on Andrea's grave? To try to allay his psychological ghosts, David goes to Depression-era Chicago to dig up what he can about his mother's life in the theaters there—an expedition that fills the book's center, may be its most involving section, leads David to an ``insight,'' and is ended suddenly when, back home, his dear old Negro friend, Lawrence Flake, has a stroke. David's return and Lawrence's illness will bring about a revelation, a reversal, a battle between good and evil, and two deathbed scenes, one more mawkish than the other, each extended deliciously by the absence of modern medicine. Evans's world of the angelic and the satanic, of homily, sermonette, and deep thoughts, is brought—in his usual rickety, jerry-built fashion—to life once again. Whatever your reaction may be to melodrama, read it and weep. (First printing of 500,000; Literary Guild featured selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-83472-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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