An unconventional but effective take on the legacy of Nazism.
A reissue of a 1986 novel by Waldrop—an acclaimed experimental poet who was born in Germany in 1935 before immigrating to the U.S. in the '50s—which carefully braids a family’s decline with the rise of Nazi Germany.
Lucy, the narrator of this haunting, distinctive novel, is writing to her sister—or perhaps half sister—Andrea with family history much on her mind. Their mother, Frederika, married Josef, a teacher and World War I veteran, in Germany in 1926, but within months she was pursuing an affair with Franz, leaving the identity of the younger girl’s father uncertain. Beyond complicating the family tree, the infidelity has messed with everybody’s psyches, or at least that’s Lucy’s assertion. Andrea retreated into a convent; her twin sister, Doria, escaped to start her own family, and Lucy feels she’s inherited mom’s penchant for affairs. Lucy is trying to pinpoint the root of this dysfunction: The novel’s convoluted title refers to a dropped handkerchief that landed in Kitzingen, her family’s hometown, a symbol of the impact of a single arbitrary event. The sense of arbitrariness and dysfunction is mirrored in Lucy's recollection of German history. If Frederika had put her foot down more about listening to Wagner, might things have been different? Did the fact that Franz is a Jew further stoke Josef’s enchantment with Nazism? “Can I possibly isolate any one particular event as the cause of other particular events?” she writes. “Construct a different family myth out of one little sentence?” Lucy presents a cool intellectual facade, but the novel is littered with spikes that suggest an inner fury—most clearly in the all-caps section headings: “AM I TAKING MOTHER’S SIDE?”; “LATER, YOU GO INTO CONVULSIONS”; “DO YOU NEED ME TO REMIND YOU THAT THE NAZIS GAINED VOTES?” As the political betrayals in Josef’s world intensify, she creates a crushing sense of Lucy’s feeling burdened by family and country alike.
An unconventional but effective take on the legacy of Nazism.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-948980-01-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dorothy
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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
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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