A bleak look at a bitter life that may be too much for readers to bear.
In 1945, a widowed Mexican immigrant faces powerfully difficult conditions in Ruiz’s (A Lawyer, 2012, etc.) latest novel.
With four children to feed and a recently deceased husband, migrant worker Jesusita González struggles to earn a living as a picker following California’s crops. Her children do their best but often exasperate their mother—particularly Paulina, the most frequent recipient of her wrath. Jesusita’s world changes significantly, however, when she’s convinced to attend a pilgrimage to a holy shrine of the Virgen de Guadalupe. There, she has a profoundly religious experience that deepens her faith. She befriends her local priest and becomes active in the church community. Unfortunately, though, she still experiences anger and rage. Poor Paulina is still her primary target, and the beatings are severe; Jesusita simply keeps Paulina out of school until the cuts and bruises fade. One day, Jesusita succumbs to her anger once again—and this time, she goes way too far. After struggling with her daughter on a riverbank, the girl gets swept away by the current. Did Jesusita push her? Was Paulina possessed by the devil? Did Jesusita want her to die? Jesusita struggles with these difficult questions, as well as those of the police and her neighbors, and her efforts take a disastrous toll on her family, on her body, and on her mind. Ruiz vividly displays his knowledge of the harsh conditions experienced by Mexican immigrants. However, his characters are just as harsh, and as a protagonist, Jesusita is about as unsympathetic as they come: she rarely expresses affection for her children, instead seeing them as just a burden to be borne. She feels no remorse for her beatings of Paulina, believing that they “weren’t sins.” But in this novel, things are hard for everyone. One subplot, for example, follows a woman who was being paid for sexual favors at 6 years old. Another tells of a mentally challenged boy who isn’t allowed inside the house of his adoptive family. The misery in this novel is abundant and acute, and as a result, many readers may agree with one character who remarks, “I’ve heard enough about Jesusita and her kids.”
A bleak look at a bitter life that may be too much for readers to bear.Pub Date: May 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937484-33-0
Page Count: 249
Publisher: Amika Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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