A lyrical, gritty read with a compelling young protagonist.
Hess (Skyscraper, 2016, etc.) returns with a dark thriller set in late 19th-century St. Louis, where the lives of a teenage boy and a renowned architect intersect.
Fifteen-year-old orphan Calhoun McBride lives by the banks of the Mississippi River, a street-wise river rat surviving by earning a nickel an hour on the night shift at Snopes brewery—and often, through prostitution. When he’s saved enough for train fare, he plans to head west, perhaps to Wyoming. Clement Cartwright, originally from St. Louis but now based in Chicago, arrives in town for the grand opening of a celebrated skyscraper he’s designed. Also in town is the dangerous, deranged Belasco Snopes, the wealthy and powerful owner of the brewery that bears his name, who’s determined to take Clement down. One night, Belasco follows Calhoun to Clement’s hotel room and realizes that he can destroy the architect with what he’s found out about him. On the sidelines is the melancholy, 30-something socialite Dolores Brattridge, who, together with her husband, is to host a high society welcome dinner for Clement. Calhoun, Clement, Belasco, and Dolores take turns narrating the story, and Hess effectively gives each voice a cadence that reflects his or her education, background, and current station in life. Of the four, Dolores is the least developed; she interacts with each of the three other primary characters, but the storyline doesn’t particularly benefit from her narration. From the beginning, it’s apparent that Hess is a skillful wordsmith, capable of strong evocative prose: “At night, the Mississippi River is mean and ain’t quiet,” narrates Calhoun. “Dark waves smack the cobblestone shore and lick my dirty feet.” The melodic phrasing and riveting drama compensate for the fact that the characterization sometimes seems overwrought. The conclusion, if not quite satisfying, feels sadly inevitable.
A lyrical, gritty read with a compelling young protagonist.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59021-712-2
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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