Ethnic animosities make for an awkward fit with standard-issue midlife floundering.
A white banker tries to thwart a Native American entrepreneur while handling his midlife crisis in this first novel set in rural Minnesota.
When John "JW" White met upper-crust Carol Ingersoll, he was a teenage horse trainer; after they married, he worked his way up to head the local bank. They had a good marriage until their son died in a car accident. As the novel opens, a year after the family's tragedy, JW is advising a group of bankers on how to secure Native Americans' deposits while denying them loans. After his slick presentation, he stops at an Indian-owned casino but finds that he can’t leave: He’s addicted to gambling. The unraveling that began with his son's death has led JW to a temporary separation from Carol and their daughter, Julie, and now his gambling losses lead him to be evicted from his apartment. Can things get worse? You bet. His ruthless boss, Frank Jorgenson, fears a charismatic young Ojibwe, Johnny Eagle, is building his own bank, threatening the collapse of theirs. Jorgenson’s instruction is terse: Stop him. He's discovered that JW embezzled money from the bank and is suspending him until he delivers. JW isn't used to playing rough, but he’ll do anything to reunite his family, so he rents a trailer across from Eagle’s house on the reservation, which he bugs. Soon he's working for Eagle’s wild rice operation and teaching his troubled teenage son horsemanship. These naturalistic scenes anchor the story. But will the fundamentally decent JW switch his allegiance to the virtuous Eagle? Here Otto is much less sure-footed. Unable to convey the bland JW’s spiritual struggle, which should have been the heart of the matter, he serves up instead a creaky plot involving safe-cracking, two shootings and two cases of arson.
Ethnic animosities make for an awkward fit with standard-issue midlife floundering.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-57131-109-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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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