A crime story that’s hard to put down but may not be for all tastes.
Gun lust, misogyny, and murder are among the ingredients in Robertson’s debut novel.
Sam Robbins hates his boss, his “over-rouged” co-worker, and his job involving dull “numbers connected to dull accounts and even duller people.” He’s also annoyed by his mother and harbors a grudge against his ex-wife. When not at work, Sam likes to takes multiple daily showers in his small, half-furnished apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, which features a “dowdy brown stuffed chair” and a “short stack of videotapes.” Lackluster Sam cooks up a plan to go from boring to ballistic, and the recipe calls for murder. He hides an issue of Guns magazine at work the way a preteen boy might harbor a copy of Playboy under his bedclothes, so he can barely contain himself when he overhears a co-worker, Bill Jackson, accepting an assignment to kill mobster Sal Lastretto. Sam wants in on the deal—“The hit, not the money”—so he befriends Bill. However, Sam has mixed feelings about Bill’s “inviting smile” and casual touches; Bill also invites him to dinner and a play about “two star-crossed lovers, both male.” Sam works to keep the seduction in check as he proceeds with his plan to take over the killing assignment. Along the way, he bargain-shops for guns and tries new disguises. This tale of a malcontent’s evil exploits seems preposterous, and Sam’s excitement over his AK-47 and shotgun (“he noted the ease of operating the pump as he pondered the words, ‘hit anything in the room’ ”) is disturbing. But although this book may not be for everyone, there are enough twists and intrigue here to satisfy many readers. It also provides a unique character in sad, shy Bill. Overall, Robertson manages to generate considerable tension in this thriller, which could potentially be the first in a series of dark adventures for Sam.
A crime story that’s hard to put down but may not be for all tastes.Pub Date: June 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-938749-27-8
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Enchanted Indie Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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