A thin but entertaining superhero story.
In a world where superheroes roam freely among humans, a man tries to avenge the death of his wife.
Hartman (When Santa Came to Town, 2014) and Bedford set their novel in the fictional town of Liar’s Paradise, where superheroes and supervillains roam the streets. Unfortunately, the Cadet, the town’s most prominent hero, abuses his powers by sleeping with adoring women, even going so far as to stage accidents from which he can then rescue them. None of this really matters much to the novel’s hero, reformed criminal Lex Tennessee, who is mostly focused on his new legitimate job and his beloved wife, Peggy. However, this changes when Peggy has an affair with the Cadet and is then killed in a mysterious accident. When he realizes the truth about the Cadet, Lex dedicates himself to finding the hero’s weakness and avenging his wife’s death, with a little help from some former supervillains. This universe is an intriguing one where heroes and villains are part of the fabric of everyday life—and where the line between hero and villain is sometimes thinner than expected. The story is built on a fantastic idea that has shades of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel Watchmen, albeit without such darkness. Readers might wish for a little more fleshing out of this novel’s world: How long have superheroes been a part of the life of Liar’s Paradise? Are there other heroes waiting to take the Cadet’s place? Answers to these questions and others would have helped to develop a fuller, richer world for the story to inhabit. Instead, it’s mostly swagger and violence as people shout lines like “Show’s over, asshole!” The characters are also rather thinly drawn, especially the females; from saintly Peggy to sexy but villainous Airy Phantom, they don’t quite leap off the page as fully three-dimensional figures. It seems clear that Hartman and Bedford are planning to expand this novel into a series. More careful development of the people and their motivations—instead of relying too much on cartoonish dialogue and action sequences—might serve them well.
A thin but entertaining superhero story.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0980223811
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Sparkony Entertainment, LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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