Both the familiar and the strange are eloquently evoked and celebrated here: a model anthology.
Editor Ravenel has cast her net widely and well, making the 18th installment of this deservedly successful series one of its best yet.
Only a handful of the contributors have familiar names, and two of them appear here in peak form. John Dufresne’s “Johnny Too Bad” is a hilarious monologue spoken by a transplanted New Englander and would-be writer experiencing a Florida hurricane alongside his brainy, voluptuous girlfriend Annick and “chronically aggressive” dog Spot. Now that Dufresne has moved south, FFW (Florida’s Funniest Writer) Carl Hiaasen will need to look to his laurels. Equally impressive is Dorothy Allison’s “Compassion,” whose narrator’s unflinching description of her beloved “Mama’s” death from cancer blossoms into a rich orchestration of family contention, closeness, and pride. A somewhat similar story, Donald Hays’s “Dying Light,” depicts the subtly changing relationships among another moribund cancer victim, his frail devoted wife, and their unhappily married, underachieving adult son. Embattled relationships also figure in Michael Knight’s “Ellen’s Book,” which is and isn’t about “a dead baby haunting his father,” and Latha Viswanathan’s breezy portrayal of an Indian matchmaker operating out of Houston via the Internet (“Cool Wedding”). Several stories accomplish what Steve Almond declares the objective of his own fine, wild story of alleged alien visitation, “The Soul Molecule”: “to find a note of grace in the incontrovertibly strange.” Best are Brock Clarke’s Barthelmian fantasy about a victim of divorce who consoles himself by buying the city of Savannah (“For Those of Us Who Need Such Things”) and Ingrid Hill’s literally miraculous tale of a maimed Vietnam vet’s fortuitous collision with stoical black healer “Mother Peaches” (“The Ballad of Rappy Valcour”). And if traditional stories are your thing, don’t miss Paul Prather’s loving depiction of a group of elderly women who shepherd a rundown church through its inevitable demise (“The Faithful”).
Both the familiar and the strange are eloquently evoked and celebrated here: a model anthology.Pub Date: July 11, 2003
ISBN: 1-56512-395-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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