This is the third volume of the Canadian writer's roman fleuve (Fifth Business—1970; The Manticore—1972); they are interlocked by ideas rather than events (which hardly exist for Davies) and reappearing characters—Dunstan Ramsay in particular. Davies, who has been universally considered very "intelligent," writes a kind of andante cantabile prose which often lulls you into inattention—particularly in this book which appears to be, at the beginning, the soliloquy of Magnus, a great conjurer. He confides the particulars of his life during the filming of a vehicle on Robert-Houdin (Houdini) in which his listeners concur that Magnus is far more interesting than R-H, in fact "the damndest man around." One traces his footsteps as the son of a "hoor" to a carnival to an interim spent putting together the toy collection of a great industrialist to the seemingly interminable time he spends on tour. But this is all just another kind of vehicle for Davies' idees recues on God and the Devil and Faustian bargains and "possessions of the soul" and illusion—above all illusion. Davies, to call a spade a spade, or fustian "the warp and woof of fustian," is an old-fashioned writer; words like a "despoiled girl" or "beglamored" are hardly offset by modernisms ("Oh balls") and his divagations take the strangest turns; after settling down with the notion that you are only following the autobiographical story of his magus, you are back at the close with the almost unremembered and unfinished part of his Fifth Business—the shooting of Boy Staunton. . . . An elaborate, elegant if you will, mummery, not only of the real world but those older other ones. At one point Magnus comments, and all corroborate, that "without attention to detail, you will have no illusion." But then illusion relies on more than detail and sonorous metaphysical inquiry particularly if cast in the form of a mystery play.
Pub Date: March 15, 1976
ISBN: 0143039148
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1976
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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