Mega-selling Brown (Exclusive, 1996, etc.) returns, this time with a tale of murder, mayhem, and the battle of the sexes set in sleazy, swampy, sweaty New Orleans. Burke Basile is a rare commodity in present-day New Orleans— an honest cop—and when his partner (and closest friend) Kevin Stuart dies during an investigation, his life falls apart. In rapid succession, he leaves his wife Barbara (with whom he's never really been in love), quits his job at the NOPD, and vows to seek revenge on the man he blames for Kevin's death: prominent defense attorney/crime-lord Pinkie Duvall. Basile decides that the surest way to get at Pinkie, who's probably the best connected, most protected hard-core criminal in the Big Easy, is through his beautiful wife Remy, whom Pinkie rescued from a life of squalor and poverty and transformed into his own private plaything. But behind the facade, Remy has a mind of her own and a reason for tolerating her husband: As long as she's with him, she can care for the only person she's ever loved, her younger sister Flarra. After a crazy hoax—involving a child molester named Gregory who owes Basile a favor—Basile ends up in hiding with Remy, whom he's kidnapped, at his secluded, rustic cottage. Meanwhile, back in the city, Pinkie and his stooge Wayne Bardo are on a rampage, determined to find Basile and Remy and, now that Remy's been ``tainted'' by her association—even against her will—with another man, to kill them both. In isolation, Basile and Remy find that they have a lot more in common than a hatred of Pinkie, and by the time the situation comes to its inevitable conclusion, plenty of heads have rolled. No surprises here, but Brown's readers will find this Mardi Gras extravaganza more than satisfying. (First printing of 500,000; Literary Guild main selection/Doubleday Book Club selection)
Pub Date: June 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-51632-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
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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