Olmstead's first novel is a drawn out melodrama of love and underworld murder in rural New England. By the author of the story collection River Dogs (1987). Asel and Averell are the orphaned brothers of backwoods (Maine) parents who fished and trapped for a livelihood. After their accidental death, young Asel is raised by a brutal German farmer named Borst; later (still unable to read or write), he works for older brother Averell deep in the Maine woods, as a scout and guide for big-city "sports" who come, in their decadent manner, to drink and shoot. All goes well until Averell mysteriously disappears, and Asel lives on in their hunting cabin for three years, trapping furs for a decent-minded middleman and wrestling with a Great and Tormenting Secret. The secret—not revealed until the close—is that Asel has murdered two especially depraved "sports" who seemed, on top of it, to have some kind of strangle-hold on Averell. What the reader does learn early on, however, is that three years alone in the wilderness drive Asel to acknowledge his need for Woman. He sets out for New Hampshire, where the middleman has arranged contacts for him, and he ends up living with an erstwhile VISTA volunteer (and now schoolteacher) named Phoebe King, who has troubles of her own (a husband-in-name-only who died in Vietnam; a tyrannical father; an absent mother) that give her, frequently, a tendency to cry. An atmosphere of angst and shapeless foreboding hovers over the lives of Asel and Phoebe ("You know, sometimes I try to figure it all out and I can't"). There will be scenes of farm life; the beery antics of local rustics; a woman who hangs herself in the forest ("We all kill ourselves in the end," philosophizes Asel. "Some of us need help. Some of us don't"); and a scene (impeccably rendered) of Asel butchering an ox as the novel waits sluggishly for its ending to come about: return to the north woods; sudden appearance of central-casting gangsters; shootings and a house on fire; one last murder; and returning Asel's closing embrace with the waiting-at-home Phoebe. Half and half: crisply observed set-pieces robustly written, the whole placed into an ambience of made-for-TV soap.
Pub Date: March 12, 1988
ISBN: 0394757521
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Vintage/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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