The latest from Gunesekera (Heaven’s Edge, 2003, etc.) is a gentle story of awakening and regeneration.
While the title refers to a cricket match, the book’s real action is played out against a volatile background of political revolution in Sri Lanka.
Sunny is a young man growing up in Manila, though his father, a journalist, is originally from Sri Lanka. As a boy, Sunny is enamored of two things: cricket and Tina, and both obsessions converge in a match in which Tina, a natural at the sport, helps Sunny’s team eke out a victory. Almost immediately after the flush of this achievement, however, Sunny’s world starts to fall apart when he discovers that his mother’s “accidental” death was actually a suicide—and he blames his father for her self-destruction. His life takes another unexpected turn when he travels to London to study engineering, a field he has almost no interest in. For a time, what does absorb him is the swinging capital itself, though he discovers that his friend Lydia, who is studying meteorology there, spends her time measuring old rocks, not partying. “So much for hedonism,” he concludes. Sunny’s life continues to unfold in unpredictable ways, especially after he meets and marries radiant Clara. Abandoning engineering, Sunny opens a photography studio with tepid results. He and Clara have a son, Mikey, who grows up much more interested in rock music than in cricket or in his parents’ heritage. Eventually Sunny’s domestic world begins to fragment, and he decides to visit Sri Lanka. The final cricket match Sunny witnesses becomes an epiphany, for he is graced with a circumscribed but nevertheless momentous realization that “things could be renewed,” and that he can use words to “bring peace to his own mind if not to the world.”
The latest from Gunesekera (Heaven’s Edge, 2003, etc.) is a gentle story of awakening and regeneration.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59558-198-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
