The American family—that one subject matter that's proven an undepletable mine for writers—gets another thorough going-over in Miller's second novel. And what rich veins she uncovers in a book that should further establish her reputation, even among those who felt skeptical about The Good Mother. Here, Miller widens her canvas to explore the complicated sources of trauma in a large family—Lainey and David Eberhardt, married shortly after WW II, and their half-dozen children who break down into two groups. First come Liddie, Mack, and Randall—the latter born severely retarded, the piece of grit in the familial oyster, around whom layers of emotional secretions form. In him, Lainey finds a perfect receptacle for love and histrionics. David, the cool psychiatrist who blames Lainey for Randall's retardation and can't allow his son to become the modus operandi of their lives, suffers stoically through his wife's three subsequent pregnancies (her way of making up for Randall), which produce Nina, Mary, and Sarah. These children, "the last straws," as David sometimes calls them, will bear the brunt of their parents' eventual separation and divorce. For a while, Mack stands in for his absent father, even while he undergoes a difficult adolescence during the Vietnam era. And years later, after Randall has been institutionalized, it falls to Nina to come to terms with the Eberhardt muddle—to embrace "the great loving carelessness at the heart of every family's life." Miller tells this tale from several viewpoints that produce memorable segments documenting Lainey's half. crazed, deeply sensual maternalism, Nina's struggle to see herself as an individual, Mack's identification with Randall (whom he once calls his twin), and David's hunger for a quieter life. Oddly, Randall remains the undramatic cipher, functioning largely as a symbol. Still, around him, the Eberhardts mesmerize, thanks to Miller's fresh eye and ceaseless probings.
Pub Date: May 1, 1990
ISBN: 0060929987
Page Count: -
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1990
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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