A debut reminiscent of modern art—often unsettling, not always easy or beautiful, but rewarding to the reader willing to...
A singular novel told largely through interviews between an introspective journalist and the leaders of a New Age therapy said to transfigure its subjects’ personalities.
In his debut novel, Simonini constructs a parallel culture just a few degrees shy of the present. The center of this culture is the “personality movement,” in which celebrity therapists who resemble Oprah with a side of psychodrama work to manipulate their patients’ "p," which, the unnamed journalist says, "as best as I could understand, was some kind of energy substance at the root of our identities.” Through their televised sessions, the therapists work to “turn” patients away from negative behavior patterns with a series of bizarre mental and physical exercises, ideally resulting in the patient gaining a new interpersonal identity. When the reporter agrees to interview the de facto leader of the movement, a woman known only as Mayah, he begins a 20-year correspondence that becomes the major focus of his career, providing an insider’s look at a widespread cultural movement that brings into question the nature of celebrity and its intersections with personal wellness. The narrative is primarily composed of interviews between the journalist and Mayah’s adopted son, Masha, who soon becomes the face of the empire. Though the interviews occasionally spiral into an invented jargon that is more confusing than illuminating, they are consistently hypnotizing as they build a portrait of an individual and his life’s work of manipulating patients' bodies and minds to reconstruct their personalities. As the treatments Masha prescribes grow more physically demanding and accusations arise regarding sexual abuse, the public begins to question the ethics behind his practice, and the narrator struggles to remain objective as the roles of interviewer and subject blur.
A debut reminiscent of modern art—often unsettling, not always easy or beautiful, but rewarding to the reader willing to grapple with its questions.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61219-668-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
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
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
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