A slim, ornate, leisurely memoir of the author’s time at Caramoor.
Meyers (My Mad Russian, 2015, etc.) tells of his time as a servant at a historic mansion in this memoir.
In 1970, 17-year-old Meyers began working as an underbutler at the Caramoor estate near Katonah, New York. Built by the theremin soloist Lucie Bigelow Rosen and her lawyer/banker husband, Walter Tower Rosen, the mansion was a hodgepodge of European high culture populated by a colorful assortment of butlers, maids, gardeners, valets, and their families. The Rosens were deceased by this point; Caramoor was the seat of their Foundation for the Arts and the home of its executive director, Michael Sweeley. Meyers spent his days dusting artifacts and bringing Sweeley his tea, setting it “on the bureau beside his big oaken 16th-century bed, opposite the mantelpiece bearing bronze John Harvard bookends and an inscribed photograph of Gina Bachauer.” In his free time, Meyers had access to the estate’s 100 acres of wooded paths, its extensive library, and some of its art, which he was allowed to hang in the cottage he inhabited on the grounds. The annual Caramoor Summer Music Festival brought musicians, whom Meyers had to discipline when they tried to misuse antique furniture. Meyers was able to meet celebrated artists and performers like Julius Rudel, Maureen Forrester, Andrea Velis, and New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. When the house opened as a museum, Meyers gave tours to visitors, pointing out unique features and collections. Meyers’ prose, ornate and slightly mannered, befits the memoir’s formal and anachronistic setting: “The Rosens’ taste was very good, but didn’t seem to extend past about 1800. I expect that both consciously rebelled against the Victoriana they were raised amidst, but from there their tastes went backwards, not forwards.” This is a slim volume, which works in its favor. Neither a strong narrative nor strong emotions ever arise over the course of the author’s reminiscences. Instead, the account mirrors a leisurely walk through Caramoor’s house and property, with Meyers pausing to acknowledge a particular room or object, a ritual associated with a certain hour of the day, or a person and some brief anecdote associated with him or her. What the book lacks in narrative momentum, it makes up for in the way it successfully summons not just a place, but the energy of that place. This is a work dedicated to an earlier era, during which time the author was employed at an estate dedicated to an even earlier era. It isn’t nostalgia that characterizes Meyers’ words so much as appreciation for a tiny enclave dedicated to finery away from the larger conflicts and trends of the modern world. To read this book is to escape briefly into a mindset where high tea and fine art are all one needs to forget one’s problems. Meyers’ brief time at Caramoor and the shortness of this work are a testament to the unfortunate fleetingness of such sentiment.
A slim, ornate, leisurely memoir of the author’s time at Caramoor.Pub Date: June 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63492-416-0
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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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