For the omnivorous reader who, like Meg, can't get enough of the insights and passions and theories and inner lives of...
Freewheeling intellectual journey with no destination.
A provocative book called The Science of Living Forever puts reviewer Meg in a reflective frame of mind. As she orders a batch of scientific/philosophical books to pore over, she finds herself questioning her assumptions about the universe and examining her relationship with prickly live-in Christopher. Meg's bread-and-butter gig is the Zeb Ross adventure series; she even holds retreats teaching other ghostwriters how to write for Zeb. But constantly in the back of her mind is the literary novel she spends a lot of energy avoiding and/or making notes for. On holiday in Scotland, woes over this unrealized opus lead to a lively discussion on the nature of the novel; must it have a story and a pattern, or can it depict what happened and offer "Zen" stories, designed to wean the reader from the restrictive expectation of cause and effect? Does it matter? Thomas toys with this idea. The narrative is built around small developments in Meg's life but studded with philosophical and literary discussions and riffs based on the ideas of writers/thinkers of the past (Nietzsche, Chekhov) and present (not household names, but she helpfully includes several titles in the acknowledgments). The more anxious Meg becomes over the novel, the more she becomes absorbed in her knitting and the lives of her friends. Libby has pushed her car into the water to cover up an affair and Meg's ex Drew is co-starring in a new Anna Karenina film. There's also the little matter of Meg kissing another man, the restless and much older Rowan. An unexpected TV deal brings a financial windfall that should change Meg's life significantly but doesn't—at least not right away. And when Christopher suffers an injury, he becomes impossible to live with. Meg leaves him, but not dramatically, simply sneaking away when he's not at home.
For the omnivorous reader who, like Meg, can't get enough of the insights and passions and theories and inner lives of others, Thomas's fifth novel (The End of Mr. Y, 2006, etc.) should be an addictive delight.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-101391-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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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