An exciting, enticing first entry in a planned series.
A historical fantasy starring a visitor from the 22nd century and Abraham Lincoln.
On a crowded train in 1849, a most anachronistic meeting takes place between the future 16th president of the United States and a curious looking man from Baltimore circa 2163 A.D.; Edwin Blair offers Lincoln a cash gift, makes an appointment with the future commander in chief for 14 years later and, in a flash, transports himself to 1863 Washington where he marches to the White House and calls in his favor. Blair hails from an apocalyptic future brought about by an alien invasion and his mission is to convince Lincoln and a select few members of his cabinet to use the inevitable confrontation at Gettysburg as cover for annihilating this race of extraterrestrials before they grow too strong. Why not pick a time with nuclear warheads instead of Griffen guns, and supercarriers instead of ironclads? Because that wouldn’t be any fun. More technically, Blair explains that if you assault the alien vessels with modern weaponry, they explode and the radius of devastation stretches for miles. But, really, it’s a happily contrived excuse for a witty, ludicrous, knowing and engaging science-fiction/historical novel. There’s something deliciously self-conscious in Pielke’s thoughtfully rendered character study of the Great Emancipator being weaved into the broader scenes of a 22nd-century historian holding forth on time travel and aliens while attempting to convince Lincoln, and by extension the reader, of the novel’s tongue-in-cheek premise. In the prose and loving period detail, the novel has charm in abundance. The smells of 19th-century America are a surprising and convincing detail as Blair plods along the streets and fields of ancient America, and he is constantly attempting to adjust his lexical choices to the period, with amusingly overwrought results. Pielke manages all this with great admiration for the period and its language. But Civil War buffs beware—it’s all in good fun and it’s only possible to be so deferential when aliens are tossed onto such hallowed historical ground.
An exciting, enticing first entry in a planned series.Pub Date: May 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-1936021239
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Altered Dimensions
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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