While there are a few genuine surprises along the way, most of Amidon’s (Security, 2009, etc.) twists are telegraphed so far...
A few nights of passion ignite a man’s obsession for a mysterious woman in this tale of uncertain identities.
Recently fired from his longtime job at a prestigious left-wing charity for playing Robin Hood with funds that didn’t belong to him, Michael Coolidge is slowly sinking into the depths of depression. His wife has left him, taking their teenage son, and now Michael spends his days drinking and moping around the sleepy upstate New York town of Annville. Things start looking up the night he meets the beautiful Justine in a bar. The two start talking—she tells him she's part of the New York City art gallery scene in town on behalf of a rich client; then one thing leads to another, and Michael finds himself blissfully ensconced in a “staycation” with the sultry Justine. She speaks solely in generalities he finds sexy and the reader finds annoying and also immediately suspicious—only Michael is surprised when she disappears after four days, leaving behind an incomplete phone number and no last name. Nine months later, he sees her again in the company of a man, photographer Desmond Tracey, who soon turns up dead of a suspected drug overdose. Michael, determined to rescue his damsel in distress, digs into the photographer’s past and, making multiple improbable leaps of logic, pieces together a traumatic history for Justine—obviously not her real name—that’s entwined with the power players of Annville.
While there are a few genuine surprises along the way, most of Amidon’s (Security, 2009, etc.) twists are telegraphed so far in advance that it’s a wonder the characters don’t see them coming.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60598-865-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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